ShellShark! by Yngvarr

After wasting a long day doing crappy work no one needs, the worst thing an old shark could imagine is coming back to a lonely home where no-one waits. People can do anything to escape the cruel reality: video games, casino, drugs. All those bad habits did not just happen for no reason. I'm kinda lucky to have the most innocent one. Although, I still wonder what troubles it will lead me to...
Play a game of ShellShark! The rules are simple: all you need is a deck of cards and a bunch of shells (we used to use living molluscs). You have creature cards and action cards, should be easy to tell the difference once you see them. Creature cards have their characteristics (power and health) and some special abilities. Also you have 48 molluscs that denotes your HPs. You win when your opponent's health turns down to zero.
Shuffle your deck and take 4 cards from it.
In the beginning of the turn take a card from your deck. Now you can put one creature on a table (order matters, so choose wisely) and/or use one of your action cards. When you're done, just say "pass" (if no-one answers, try clicking "end turn"). Then comes the fight phase where your creatures beat each others' tails. Then comes the opponent's turn.
Knowing these rules should be enough to beat Bob. Good luck!
I hate the theme! If you find any clue of it in this game, tell me about it.
Credits:
| HTML5 (web) | https://yngwarr.itch.io/shellshark |
| Source code | https://github.com/hardweird/LD44 |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/44/shellshark |
Ratings
| Given | 26🗳️ | 44🗨️ |
Yeahhh!!
Really fun game, I wish it had sfx but none the less. Very entertaining. The graphics look awesome too.
As for sound, well, I really wanted to add some, but spent all the available time polishing. =( UI is essential for this kind of games.
> UI is essential for this kind of games.
true that
Really fun! Good job!
Other than that, the art is quite nice and the gameplay is fluid enough. Too bad sound effects and music are absent.
@nyandev, nice to read it, thank you! As for stats, well, that's why a preview appears when the pointer is over the card. Or am I missing something?
There isn't much to criticize about this one, it plays well.
I think we both likely ran into the same time trap regarding visual feedback for actions taken. In Contract Cleric, I didn't get particle effects done in time to signal a successful heal. In ShellShark, the floating text for when units are hit is nice, but doesn't draw much attention to the sources and recipients of damage. If you're paying attention to what the creature cards do, this isn't too big a deal. Though it'd be nice to see the crab hit a target on his left or right diagonal, or have a visual representation of the narwhal's piercing effect. I certainly fell into that trap harder than you did, haha.
In such a short development cycle that's probably outside the scope of what there was time to implement. If you continue with this project, which I hope you do, maybe calculating the damage values and showing some preview arrows before ending the turn would be a worthy addition. Given the underwater motif, I could see this being a pretty neat campaign driven card game.
The card art was great. The Bob art was even better! I'm glad I looked up at him to see that shirt and tie. It gave me a laugh.
Good job!
All the art is well done and cute! I really enjoy how you fit it into the browser and made it adjustable based on the size. Very cool work.
@cnatalo, whoa! 0_o resizing a window must bring them back. Anyway, thank you for playing!
Yeah, I did catch the win / lose glitch screen. Sorry - I should have mentioned it! ^^;
To the theme: In my opinion, there is an option for optiong-out for the theme. But Im not sure. Nevertheless, it is always wise to let us know that it doesnt have to be connected to the theme :)
As for the theme category, I would love the option to opt-out of it. Moreover, the rules support this idea:

So it remains mysterious for me why there is no button on a submission page to actually opt-out from the category.
Тема с креветками рили уморительна. Классно вышло, так держать.
Congrats for your entry !
I really enjoyed playing it. And I loved Bob, he is just such a good loser :)
Well Done great job.
Nitpicks:
* be consistent with card descriptions - is *bites* and *kicks* actually diffent or is it just for flavour? You could possibly visually seperate abilities from flavour text.
* be a bit more descriptive (or least describe the keywords so they take up cardspace) - It took me quite a while to realise what the narwhal card does (though the description made me chuckle)
BTW. I hated the theme as well. Out of the 6 or 7 times I've attended (not necessarily finished) LD, this one I actually hated. That being said, the game that came out of it is actually probably my best design. Though I haven't really stuck with the theme either, so there's that :sweat_smile:
As for the theme, I hated the previous one the most. But when "life as a currency" were announced I went "oh, come on, why is it so similar to the prevous one?" For real, it was the _second_ time my previous entry fits the current theme _better_ then the theme it was designed with. :confused: