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Once I submitted my game and noticed the URL ended with '/dungeon-solitaire-1' I knew I had to come check this out. Nice submission, congratulations!

It's amazing! nostalgia!
great project! especially I liked the style and graphics!

The title+screen attracted me instantly. After few minutes with compo I decided it is worth giving the post-compo version a try. I like that you went with Hexen/Heretic style, it is probably what kept me playing despite being aware that I will not bother to complete the solitare challenge. It got me exploring, decent job on the game world with rewards hidden in passages. Graphics and monsters are very good considering the pixelage you were going with. Enemies sometimes end up taking too many hitpoints before dying, but I guess you needed a way to make survival harder. There was a funny part at start when I met the first monster, I instinctively retreated and it did the same so I realized he is mirroring me on forward axis and I can make him move back and forth (worth mentioning the proper AI sets in when you get close enough to the monster).

Really interesting idea! Loved the low-res graphics and lo-fi sound. The idea of actually trying to complete a game of solitaire in this terrify's me though - well done for doing it yourself.

Thanks a lot for sharing, well done!

The game is really fun, but it is too hard in my opinion. I couldn't kill any monster without getting hit, so solving Solitaire was just running to pick one card and then dying. But anyway, the graphic and music is just amazing. You also perfectly mixed puzzle game with an old style rouge-like.

The theme is pretty great and I imagine I'd enjoy playing something like this as a kid if it came bundled with an old windows installation. The monsters work well enough and the interface is legible. But I think you've restricted the game so much that it just becomes frustrating after a while.

My first run through the game I got lost right off the bat. I ventured a little ways from the card room and was unable to find my way back. A teleport home button, or a minimap, or an arrow pointing back to the card room, would have been appreciated, as would some markers making the card room stand out from the other walls. I understand I could die to teleport back, but there weren't always enemies around.

I restarted the game and this time I only followed one wall so I could find my way back. This worked well enough but I had to backtrack constantly, making the game really slow and tedious. Again, I understand the intention that I'd pick up cards along the way using solitaire rules, but at any given point there's a very small chance I'll actually find the card I need, and if I didn't bring the cards back to the card room I'd forget where I left them because I could not find my way around - everywhere looked the same. Besides - after 6 minutes of play I'd only found 6 or 7 cards.

It's also worth pointing out that since I could drop cards anywhere in the world, the 4 stacks I could create on the wall of the card room seemed a bit pointless.

I think there's a very different approach you could have taken that uses more or less the same mechanics, but would have become a much more compelling experience:
- Scrap the card room. Put the solitaire interface in a HUD: 4 spaces for aces on the top, 4 spaces for stacks on the bottom.
- Add a LOT more enemies, and put the player in tense arena situations with 5-10 cards left lying around after the dust has settled. Also, change the dungeon layout from a corridor focus to a lot of large rooms with a higher render distance.
- Don't let the player drop cards, only pick them up or rearrange them in his HUD.
- If the player doesn't (or isn't able to) pick up cards after an encounter, get rid of them after a while.

I know I'm describing a very different game from what you seem to have had in mind. It's something I personally would have enjoyed a lot more, as it wouldn't have forced me to stop the exploring/fighting to run back home after every encounter. It seems other people are enjoying the game you have now more than I am, so it's possible I'm not the target audience here.

What it comes down to for me is that I'm really impressed with your combat and movement mechanics, graphics, and overall aesthetic. I really wish I could enjoy your game more, and it frustrates me that so much good work went in this design direction. There are a lot of good things about this title, so please keep participating. I would love to see what you come up with next LD.

@amras0000 thanks for such a detailed review :) I also find the interface for the cards pretty tedious. Since the competition end, I have been constantly thinking about how I would do it better. I added the drop mechanic initially because without it the game is very very slow. At least with the drop mechanic you can horde cards in the card room and just use the walls to sort them if necessary.

Here are some options I considered:

1. No drop mechanic, cards can stack in any order in the inventory but still are picked up and placed in first-in-last-out. This makes it really easy to get permanently stuck if you pick up a King with no free slots on the wall.
2. A variation on this would be to have a "destroy" button instead of "drop", which removes a card from your inventory and puts it in the pocket of a monster somewhere in the map. However, I'd have to rework the monster spawning a bit for this. I could respawn monsters in previously cleared areas (but this makes it harder to navigate based on "no monsters -> I've been here" logic) or I could make the map much bigger (or even procedurally generated to improve replayability) and have ample redundancy in monsters to use for collecting cards.
3. 10 independent inventory slots tied to number keys. Cards are picked up into any free slot and can be placed by pressing the right key.
4. Remove the randomization on cards and make it so that the cards which spawn when you kill a monster are always ones you can use.
5. Overhaul the game by having zones which unlock when certain solitaire milestones are completed (eg. reach height X in all suit stacks). The set of cards you can find would depend on the area, so you could seek out a particular card by going to a particular place.

I would love to hear what you think about these ideas, I'll probably experiment with some of them in the [post-compo version](http://www.joe-fowler.co.uk/misc/ludumdare41/post) over the coming weeks.

Superb, has a very nice stygian abyss feel to it.

What a brilliant idea! This is a real throwback to my childhood, where Solitaire and Wolfenstein 3D were the smash! I really love the art and audio, it brings a nice retro feeling to the game and creates a great atmosphere! I have a one (minor?) feature request though: a minimap (if you're someone who's as terrible as me with navigation in general it's not the killing nor inventory/card management that's difficult, it's trying to find to the goddamn card room :D )

Great job with the entry!

I like this one... Good Job

@Tiberon I was planning on adding either a compass or a minimap as part of the weapon progression but I never got around to it. In the meantime, you can add [`/level.png`](http://www.joe-fowler.co.uk/misc/ludumdare41/level.png) to the url to open up the map file in a new window ;)

@Scrumplesplunge now that's what I call a pro-tip! Thanks!

Its like if the games I played as a kid got mixed with the games my parents played as a kid. Loved the graphics and the music, very retro!

Nice ^^ I liked the music and those types of graphism is cool to ^^ The theme is respected ^^

Keep coding :)

That was impressive for a Javascrip game. :smiley:

That is original Wolfenstein renreing method, right?

And the gameplay once you get a gun becomes pretty satisfying. :smile:

The dungeon is quite big though...

And I couldn't figure hot to put cards onto piles... so I just dumbed a bunch of them into the room... and then got lost in the dark...

@Hilvon yup, I reimplemented the raycasting method. The code is a total mess, but the relevant part is in [`display.js`](http://www.joe-fowler.co.uk/misc/ludumdare41/display.js) if you are interested :)

F and R (assuming QWERTY) put things on the piles, the text will be yellow if you can place a card - it has to stack like the solitaire rules allow (so red after black, and the next smallest value, eg. red 6 after black 7).

@scrumplesplunge Ah... So the piles are going downwards...

Though... Makes sense actually. since they all appear to start with kings... and if you carry a pile dropping higher cards first... filling piles from low to high would be... tidious.

So I know that's against the concept but a minimap would be very appreciated :joy: (was walking around for 10 minutes trying to find the end)

61min43. Good idea.