A WebGL version is also available at https://compasslg.itch.io/nothing-to-everything
So now you don't need a windows machine to play!

A fairly solid card game, but I feel the pacing really hurts it. Most turns are pretty straightforward, but card animations and effects are slow and I became impatient fairly quickly.

The level advancement also doesn't feel very rewarding; in games like these you really want to show off the things you gain each level (be it new cards in the deck, the "something" ability, etc).

lastly, the enemy having the same cards as yourself makes gameplay fairly direct. Compare with Slay the Spire, where unique decks force you to think specific ways about how you approach an enemy. In this game it's mostly just picking the optimal cards and hoping the AI does the wrong thing. A quick improvement might be to hide the opponent's cards. but giving them some unique abilities would spice it up a lot.

Overall a pretty solid job for a compo entry. Minor gameplay gripes aside, I didn't hit any bugs and everything seems to work as one would expect. Nice work!

Pretty fun! It took me a moment to figure out what was going on, but once I did I felt like I had an idea of what to do. A lot of the time, though, I felt like I was just using every card every turn (since I had enough MP to support it).

One bug report: I clicked on "Something" on the menu screen and just got a dark grey page.

Interesting concept. The shared deck makes the battles pretty balanced and a little random, although I was a little smarter than the AI, and in the early fights you gave me significantly more HP. But I nearly lost because the computer got all the big attack cards early on, along with a bunch of blocks and healing. It wasn't clear how long a block card lasted - permanent until the next attack whenever it happened, or just for the next round? The music and sounds were simple but added to the game. The help was detailed, and the controls were intuitive. Clicking on the "Everything" button at the start seemed to hang the game for me - not sure what it was supposed to do.

Good foundation of a card game here. The gameplay itself is fairly simple at this point, with primarily damage/healing cards, with a handful of mana. Also, once "Everything" is unlocked, it's barely a game at all, since you can just pick "Enemy gets nothing" every single time.

I also ran into the main screen bug where "Everything", ironically, does nothing.

For a compo, this is a great amount of content and mechanics.

This game sucked me into playing for at least 30 minutes, just to beat level 7. At first I completely forgot about the thing cards because they were always "nothing" in the first two levels, and lost. 3rd playthough it became too OP as I could just destroy the enemy's cards each turn once the select-any-thing thing card was available. I guess its a way of choosing your own difficulty as you can just choose not to play them. The card game is simple and good. The game seems to lag a bit more the further a game got, and got smooth again after starting a new one, so I suspect its because the cards sent to the discard pile wasn't actually removed in memory. Good job!

EDIT: Forgot to mention the music, it's very simple, and it's catchy so it isn't annoying at all, good work.

A fairly simple card game. The thing cards had potential to add more choices to help even out the random chance of the cards. However, they were either not given at first, randomly given, or given free reign to the player in the last two rounds. I found it hilarious I could repeatedly select destroy all enemy cards every single turn, not giving them a chance to do anything. There should have been some limitation to those options in the final battles. I did enjoy the game overall, well done on making a card game like this.

Victory!

Wow, great job building a whole card game for the compo! It even has little mouse-over tween-pops, a groovy music tune, and lots of cards and features. Well done!

The strategy had a couple of little holes in it - for example sometimes I would get flooded with defense cards, or my opponent would, and the game felt like it would stall for a bit. And once I got the "everything" ability recurring every turn it completely broke the game because I just picked "nothing for enemy" every single turn and the enemy would never get to take a turn. I think the final fight the enemy played 1 card total and then I just had to click through all of my bandages and rests and blocks until I got enough damage cards to kill him.

But it's impressive to have a strategy game at ALL, and I had some fun moments of feeling clever, like using a split to clear their block before hitting with my sword, or holding back rest cards so I could double-sword.

Very nice all-around entry, congrats!

@dob Thanks for playing! the block and dodge effect last forever until being attacked.
The "Everything" in the main menu is supposed to be a twist for the theme, and it is the exit button for the windows version, but if you are playing the WebGL version then it would be a black screen.
Sorry for the confusion!

@revx thanks for playing! Yeah currently the game is very simple and straight forward, I planned a lot more in the beginning but wasn't able to make then in the end.

The “Everything” in the main menu is supposed to be a twist for the theme, and it is the exit button for the windows version, but if you are playing the WebGL version then it would be a black screen. Sorry for the confusion!

@pkenney Wow, I'm so happy you made it to the end! The nothing for enemy card is supposed to be like you can only use once in a level, I left it like this for testing purpose, but ended up not having time to implement it.

Thanks for playing, I'm glad you enjoyed it!

@fireslash Thank you very much! Sorry for the slow animation, I wonder if it is ok to speed that up and update now :(
I originally plan to have more cards and make it so you unlock cards each level, and enemy has different deck as you, but ended up not having time to implement them, which is shame but happens in many jam games~

@james-beninger Thank you for playing! yeah, the "Nothing for enemy" really broke the balance:( My intention was to make it so you can use it only once per level, but choose to leave it like that at first since it was very handy for debugging, and ended up not having time to implement it.

@toppervideogames Thanks for your feedback! the Nothing for Enemy was supposed to be a one-use-per-level card, but I left it like that so I can have a easier time debugging and ended up not having time to change it

@burnedkirby Thank you for playing and I'm very happy you made it to the end! Oops, I indeed forgot to remove the cards in graveyard, thank you for catching that! Also glad you like the music:)

Solid entry! I agree the animations are a bit slow but other than that everything is pretty clear and feedback is good. Mechanically everything is there and it works well as a card game prototype. As for the game itself, it's very basic of course but I don't expect a unique and super balanced card game from a game jam. I didn't pay too much attention to the A.I player so I'm not sure if it makes any strategic decisions or if it's pretty much random which cards it plays. I do feel a bit like a cheater by having the advantages of higher HP and the extra cards available :stuck_out_tongue:. Perhaps the A.I should have access to these cards as well. You have a good engine here, all you need is a different set of rules to make it stand out from other similar games and eventually maybe even some deck building. Good job!

It's a simple card game, but fun. It definitely started to get repetitive after a while, and it feels like there's way too much healing, so it makes the rounds last forever. On level 3 I think, I played numerous rounds, and both players were still at full health!

@nisovin Thanks for playing! The way I get round the healing issue is to just hold my big damage cards along with a mana potion when enemy has healing in their hand. Because the AI is very dumb, you can just let them use their healing when they are at full hp. After they are done, use the damage cards you have to finish it within two rounds (unless you are very unlucky). But hey, thanks for the feedback! The game definitely has some balance issue~

@silkworm-sweatshop Thank you so much for you feedback! Because I didn't have time to really balance the game, and the enemy has the same card pool as player, sometimes enemy can one shot the player in the first level:( Therefore I made it so player has more HP just so people can reach the higher level and unlock the thing cards. If I have more time, I would definitely try to balance the game in a better way (perhaps I'll spend some time extending this game after the rating is over:))

Great work! I got the in-person walkthrough on the event handlers, UI, and AI, so that little learning experience was made irrelevant. Otherwise, it was a pretty good game. I thought the earlier levels were a little bit slow, perhaps making the card healing decreased at lower levels would be a good idea. In addition, there weren't as many utility cards as I would have liked. I would like to see more cards aside from purely defensive or purely offensive; but as always, time is a bit limited in these endeavors. Fantastic job again!

@al-axe thank you for playing, and I really appreciate it! Yeah, I'll definitely spend some time upgrade the game after the rating is over

The concept of this game is in great potential. Upgrading the "passive" skill from nothing to something and higher levels is interesting for me. For system design and balancing, I would suggest taking RPG turn-based battle experience instead of the experience of card games into consideration. The resources in card games like deck size and cost do not play an important role in the system. But I believe the mechanism fits well with RPG battle concepts, like a small but strong player skill pool and more predictable enemies. This is what Slay the Spire do to modify the concept of Dream Quest into a well-accepted RPG-like battle system.

@cirno Thanks for playing ~ You are right, the current build feels more like a RPG rather than a card game. My original design was to have limited deck size and different card set for the enemy and the player; as the player reach higher levels, new cards would be unlocked. As for the "thing cards", player should be able to choose which card to swap with the enemy and which card to destroy. Unfortunately, I didn't have time to implement any of these features. Also you mentioned they are "passive cards", but after you reach "something" or "anything", you can actually activate them (just in case it was too unintuitive and you didn't notice).

But thanks for your feedback! I appreciate it a lot.

@compasslg I have noticed the power of "thing" card and found the ability of eliminating all enemy cards is the most powerful. Swapping and transforming are relatively harder to use. Ignoring the issue of balancing, this is really an interesting idea.

@cirno yeah, the game does have some serious balancing issues. Again, thanks for playing!

是我目前玩的最久的一个游戏了，哈哈哈哈~就是玩到后面音乐稍微有点吵，不过很有意思！！nice job!

@iamberf 谢谢~ 音乐确实有很多进步空间，而且游戏也需要一个可以调音量的界面

nice card game -- would like to see more types of cards but understand its hard in a jam -- nice work