Surprisingly in depth for a Game Jam game. Had lots of fun, beat it in its entirety. Loved the humour, loved the art. Great job!

Wow! I'm really suprised by this. First I thought the wall of text in the beginning was a pretty big downer. But the Gameplay is easier than it first seems.
Really cool and in depth Idea. And the Game also looks great!
Good job!

I like it, very colorful and funny :smiley:

Very cute game, impressive for the compo!

My only nitpick is that the small font is a bit hard to read on prompts, probably because of its outline (and the length of tutorial text, but any jammer that didn't do it cast the first stone).

Nicely done! I enjoyed it very much)

@bertobui - Thank you! Happy to hear you beat it!

@dropmania - Thank you! Glad you liked it! Yeah, sorry about the tutorial length, I panicked near the end that nobody would understand the game and made it way too long... I would've replaced it with a couple of images if I had time.

@sviborg - Thanks! I strive to be colorful and funny myself :)

@cagibi - Thank you! That's a good point about the font (and so true).

@sdcorpse - Thanks!

Very interesting game! Fun art style and design!

This game is so cool! I loved it!

This game was so cool! I love love loved the idea! Really want to play a real thing of this.

I just wish the AI was better - it never felt like I was in any danger of losing.

Great game, lot of contents and funny cards! :smile: Nice job!

@brotherbrody - Thank you!

@kirass - Thanks!

@bananplyte - Thanks a bunch! Glad you liked the idea! Yeah, the AI is just a very basic one I made for testing, but I ran out of time before I could improve it...

@srynetix - Thank you! Making cards here was pretty fun so I somehow ended up with more than I even needed :)

A very good card battler, quite innovative and plays on the theme in a cool way!)

The art is crazy, I always have weakness for this kind of fun games.

I did it, the gnome on the right stood no chance (he did NOT utilize the mammal bodies as well as I did).

Very fun game, I got really into it. Especially the last two levels were nailbiters, I finished them with one health left remaining. But I got through by the power of cheetah legs in the last one. Awesome gameplay! Loved the theming of the different levels too, how the challenge/puzzle was built into the cards that were available. The third one where all the cards were weaking critters over time was pretty hardcore. All the levels were great!
The presentation was great as well, the flavor texts on the cards were funny, especially on the frog legs and the T-Rex arms, those made me laugh out loud when I first saw them. SFX were extremely charming as well. The art makes everything look vibrant and fun, it captures the mood you were going for perfectly. Amazing game, very well done!

Fun use of the theme! There were certainly a lot of different creatures to explore in this game.

I think the card-based approach is an interesting one. Given that the player has no control over the deck, it effectively means that we're playing a game with a random set of 5 actions we can take each turn, that might also be restricted by the energy.

Interestingly, I found that the energy limitation was only really significant during the first turn or two. Once I had one creature in each row, there was no immediate threat, so I was really only going to be playing cards if they had a specific purpose. I found that I almost always had enough energy to play every card I wanted to play during a given turn.

This also makes the exact composition of the deck during each level very important. From what I can tell, the 0-cost cards were basically just completely useless? Which means that the deck basically has a chance to give you only 4 or 3 options each turn instead of 5.

One illustrative case of all this was the level with the "your attacks get stronger over time" theme. During that level, I didn't see any legs that did movement for 3 or 4 turns, meaning I played basically no cards as my body slots were all filled and I needed to find movement to make progress. I saw the 0-cost legs many times and eventually placed some on one of my creatures who was doomed to die, and sure enough it didn't seem to accomplish anything.

Another interesting consequence of the deck / card pool is the possibility to stalemate a row. This happened in at least two of my fights--in the final battle, I didn't realize there were going to be no legs that had any damage, and so this showdown occupied the upper left corner of the screen for most of the round:

This is arguably a good defensive strategy, but it also meant I became very scared of accidentally softlocking the game and so I played pretty carefully from there on out... made sure that basically every creature I placed had some attack and movement.

That said, all of this did mean there were interesting choices to make. Do I place a body down this turn because I have the chance? Do I wait until I get something good? Is there anything worth playing this turn, if it doesn't add attack or movement?

And it was definitely a lot of fun stumbling through the different levels and finding out what all the cards did. Interestingly, the 1st/2nd level (whichever one had the "growing attack power") was the hardest one for me, specifically due to the lack of movement available. The round with all the bugs was also very interesting, as I kept finding myself wanting to add more properties to a bug before remembering it wasn't going to be possible.

I think it's interesting how much advantage being the first player gives in this game. No matter how much health the enemy creature has, if our creature strikes first we can win as long as we have some minimum amount of damage. That said, I did still blunder a few creatures due to having the wrong amount of speed on them, letting the enemy effectively strike first. I thought the combat system was therefore pretty engaging in terms of the speed values. I think probably the most critical choices to make for any given cards was if there was some amount of speed to add to a creature that would help out.

All in all I think the variety in this game really sells it. The mix-and-match creatures are just fun to look at, such as my gnome-chicken-cat that blocked my upper lane for the whole level 4. :smile: I had fun playing through and figuring out the strategy. The number of mechanics present in the combat system plus the card system make it fun to think through and learn, even if I'm not sure the strategy gets better than "always get speed and attack". A very impressive compo entry!

@captaindreamcast - Thanks a bunch! Super happy you liked so many aspects of it, especially the levels!

@honey-pony - Thank you so much for the detailed feedback! Wow, there is a lot to unpack here.

I actually reworked the deck & energy system relatively close to the end without much thought - originally, you drew another card after playing one (so you always had 5), and the cards carried over between turns. That way, you could theoretically play way more cards each turn and the energy system kept you in check. However, when playtesting, after a few turns I always just got stuck with a bunch of cards I didn't want to play, so I switched it with the current system - where now the energy barely matters... Oh well, it still works better.

The 0-cost limbs definitely did not work out, yeah. I was inspired by MTG artifact decks I used to build, where I included a bunch of 0-cost "do nothing" artifacts just to trigger some "when playing an artifact..." effects. The idea was to give you these limbs alongside a bunch of cool "when upgraded" effects, so you could trigger them without spending energy. But there are only two of these in the entire game, and one of them (the actually good one) isn't even available in the "your attacks get stronger" level... So they're pretty much dead weight and just make that level harder. Sorry!

The potential stalemates is my biggest gripe with the game, I also always play with a constant worry of accidentally softlocking myself, which is most certainly not intended. I liked the ideas of cards which could make you weaker over time (there's an entire level built around this concept, after all), and bodies with negative base stats, without considering the implication of making stalemates (especially on the very dumb AI side) all too easy. Allowing you to sacrifice useless critters would work, but it kind of feels like a band-aid solution. I understand now why most similar games don't have a speed stat and give at least 1 attack to everyone :)

And yeah, like most strategy games, speed ended up being the most important stat, especially due to attacking first being so powerful. I'm fine with it though :)

Overall, thank you again for the super detailed feedback! Glad you enjoyed it!

This game is super cool. I was shocked by the wide variety of cards and it is fun to attach the different parts together. The gameplay is engaging and the art and sound make the game feel very polished.

My only complaint is that I wish that it would highlight all of the valid targets when I click a card. For example, when I click on a body it would be nice if it highlighted the leftmost slots and when I click on a leg it would highlight all of the creatures that have room for another leg.

Thanks for the great game!

Amazing compo entry! Feels very complete, the variety of parts is really impressive. The whole presentation is also just great!
I'm gonna blame my failure on the RNG, hit a couple of leg dry spells... I kept building really beefy creatures which got mulched by approaching enemies without being able to act :(

Wow! Really well made game, especially for a compo entry! Everything is just great, art style, game mechanics, music, sound effects, tutorial... The only think I can adds is: there is possibility maybe to get stuck? I had a round where 2 lanes were blocks with creatures that cannot attack on both sides and without ability to add new parts to them, so if not the 3rd lane it would be a total lockdown. I'm guessing adding creatures that can shoot would solve the potential issue and add another layer to the game. Anyway, awesome job with the game!

Consistent, fun, with big potential! I'm sure you had (or still have) a million ideas on how to iterate, but what's on offer here is already great!

@cronno - Thank you! You're right, highlighting all valid targets is a great idea.

@zirrrus - Thanks! Yeah, the game ended up being a bit too luck based...

@zimny11 - Thank you! Getting stuck is definitely possible and a huge issue here. I hadn't thought about ranged critters, that's a really nice solution!

@bombelix - Thanks! I certainly had more ideas, but glad you liked what's here nonetheless!

Congrats! :D

Cute and strategic. The gnome death animation stood out as more grisly than the rest of the art. I think showing what card you currently have held down would help the user feedback even more. The disabled visuals when trying to attach the wrong limb helped a lot, because I kept forgetting what cards were which types, and if compatible or not unless I dragged them together.

The variety of art fit well, I didn't even think about drawing some legs in the background versus foreground until I saw you do it.