Shady Cards by Yozamu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqpyGX9QW7U
For our first Ludum Dare, we've been able to work on the fantastic theme "Combine 2 incompatible genres". Shady Cards is a subtle combination of fast-paced action platformer and poker, set up in a retro shady environment inspired by The Adventures of Batman and Robin on Megadrive.
We've tried to reproduce a shady atmosphere where you'll play Fidji, a profesional poker player. He'll keep playing poker and will not hesitate to rob gangsters and thugs in order to refill its purse!
Our goal was to make it international so we obviously developed it in English, but we've decided to also add a French version to our build.
When you start, you are directly thrown in the city. You can discover the controls by yourself, or you can read the signs you encounter on your road. To progress through the next level, you have to reach the right edge of the map. Note that in the tutorial, your life regenerates automatically, so you can learn how to play the game in this map.
At the bottom left of the screen you can see your hand as well as the board, which constitutes the poker phase. At the bottom right you have information regarding Fidji such as his health, his current purse content, and any active bonus.
You can go inside buildings where you see breaches. Be careful though, you may encounter ennemies inside!
You can also slide on the walls by jump from outside the building. If you want to pass the walls, just go by the ground floor. You can also go to the roof and then fall down on balconies.
When you kill ennemies, they drop a random amount of chips which have the standard poker chip values. Grab them before they disappear!
You can bet in order to reveal more cards; when all cards are shown, select cards and validate a combination. Beware the timer though: if you take too much time to bet, you'll get a penalty. A valid combination will provide different bonuses depending on the cards that compose the combination. Each card will give a bonus which will have a strength depending on the card's value. The effects you can get are: spikes increase attack (you can even throw multiple cards at some point!), hearts give life, clubs give money, diamonds give attack speed.
The strongest combination is not always the best choice. For example, if you can validate a three of a kind or a pair of hearts, you may validate the pair if you need healing. The most suitable combination depends on the situation and on your priorities! You can cumulate bonuses by increasing your winning streak but be careful: your combo will be broken in case of wrong combination or if the timer expires. Note that folding do not break your combo. If you see there's no solution, quickly fold and try another round before your combo expires!
For now, the world is procedurally generated, which means you can play random maps endlessly! This choice was the best bet we could do!
| Windows | https://www.dropbox.com/s/18kezi9a0ebpton/ShadyCards-V0_10_1.exe?dl=0 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/shady-cards |
Ratings
| Overall | 599th | 3.435⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 795th | 3.074⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 471th | 3.491⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 372th | 3.87⭐ | 56🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 289th | 3.956⭐ | 59🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 215th | 3.679⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 234th | 3.717⭐ | 55🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 47🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
Playing cards mechanic very suitable for most number of games.
Also, lovely visual style.
I think adding a more prominant reason to collect the chips would be beneficial.. even just a story anecdote like he needs to save his girl from an evil poker guru :P great work on the menus too and i liked that i could re map the keys :)
And thanks for all the compliments!
feel free to check our game we hope you will like it
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/incompatible-rally
Even if it was our first LD, we really wanted to make things as polished as possible, so your compliments go straigth to the heart!
The end user shouldn't have to ALT-TAB and close window to exit
I would like the movement to be slower, as it's hard to not to run into enemies you are trying to kill.
Well done!
It matches the theme fine, and the art is well polished.
The only issue I found is that sometimes the combinations don't work, sometimes I had a Color or a Pair of kings and the game told me that it was a wrong combination, but maybe it was my fault and I forgot to check a card.
Good entry, think about developing further!
@anagf I believe that this occured when you tried to pick more than 3 cards from the board to make your combination! You should select at max 3 cards from the board + 2 from your hand, otherwise it will be counted as illegal! It felt a little confusing at first to me because I wasn't aware about this rule, but we had to make things right for those who knew poker sooo... :)
Please, take a look at my game too: https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/confessional
Le visuel et le sons sont super, mais les règles de GD sont trop nombreuses et le tutoriel est vraiment ennuyeux et long, du coup je ne suis pas sûr d'avoir tout compris. Il manque quelle que feedbacks sur le contacte ennemis, la perte de pv et la résolution une tour (poker). Le character controler est vraiment cool.
Globalement c'est quand même du très bon travail. bravo
**EN :**
The visual and sounds are great, but the rules of GD are too many and the tutorial is really boring and long, so I'm not sure I understood everything. It lacks any feedback on enemy contact, loss of pv and resolution a turn (poker). The character controler is really cool.
Overall it's still very good work. Congratulations.
@Kaiomoi You may be right, we honestly didn't have a lot of time to spend on the tutorial even though it's essential! We planned to expand it later, but we focused on procedural generation and core mechanics in general. I think it's that kind of game you can get into after spending some time, but since we are all testing a lot of games, the boring and long feeling of the tutorial can only be increased!
And of course, thanks for the compliments!
@jamblefoot Actually you're right, the penalties you get when skipping poker are too low; we aimed for bonuses such as healing, giving money, increasing attack speed and increasing number of card thrown, but the only penalty you get from not playing is having a slower attack speed. In this context, where you just have to reach the end of the level without a lot of difficulties, this only penalty seem to be really light. That's the main thing we want to work on
Would really appreciate your feedback on our game Frogger: The Jigsaw:
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/frogger-the-jigsaw
Big thanks!
I'll make sure to check your game!
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Hope it helped? Upon triple aces.
Other than that, this game is FAST.
If it helps for replication, I bet on 2 Js and 2 As. Just as I pressed the Spacebar, my screen went white and the game crashed.
Anyhow, back to my comments about the actual game. I liked it a lot, with plenty of solid mechanics and a great setting, but marred with no direction since there are no goals (that I could notice, other than reaching the end of the level, which was as simple as just running and ignoring everything else while firing).
While I like the card powering up idea and the fast paced platforming, I can't help but think that, rather than complementing each other, they're canibalizing. While I had fun with climbing up buildings, with a lack of incentive, I ended up not bothering at all later on because I wanted to try to gamble instead. Don't get me wrong. Both mechanics are great on their own, but they would rarely help each other.
The platforming, running and firing felt so good on its own. In the future, consider putting objectives, power ups or something in the middle and at the top of buildings, or put buildings that can't be entered from the side so the player is forced to climb rather than run.
Finally, for the setting. I love the music and sound effects. And the graphics are fantastic. This is very well crafted.
Loved this, but it does feel a bit short on the sides. Here's hoping you can expand on it in the future, since it shows a lot of potential. [My team](twitter.com/whalesandgames) would really like to see this continue intermingling platforming and cardplay. Keep up the good work! :whale:
Also I understand what you say about the mechanics as well as things you'd like to see in the future. Those are great remarks, and we of course did not mean to keep the game as is when complete. We've done what we could given the delay, and while we're pretty satisfied with the result, we have no doubt there's a lot of room for improvment and having such a report is really helpful. Thank you
I had a tough time getting what is going on because the game feels very fast.
I love the sound. Good job.
I left my rating of your game, if you can leave your feedback in our game, Witch's Escape.
I hope you continue with the project.
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/witchs-escape
You wrote one can read the signs on the road to get more information, however, I didn't find any signs... maybe I misinterpreted something.