Cards of the Cosmos by popesp

Cards of the Cosmos is a deck-building card game.
You lose if your deck reaches 0 cards, and win if the enemy deck reaches 0 first.
Each run consists of a series of encounters that provide gold when beaten. After your inevitable defeat, visit the card shop where you can use gold to add cards to your deck. Loss is unavoidable... or is it?
- Click on cards in your hand to play them
- Cards cost one energy to play
- Energy is set to one at the beginning of each turn
- If you run out of cards in your deck before your opponent, you lose
- Some cards create persistent effects on the field
- Gain gold by defeating opponents and spend it in the shop
- Cards purchased this way are permanently included in your deck
- The Infinite always wins... or does it?
| Link | https://github.com/popesp/LD50 |
| Link | https://pop-esp.itch.io/cards-of-the-cosmos |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/50/cards-of-the-cosmos |
Ratings
| Overall | 247th | 3.891⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 260th | 3.781⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 228th | 3.766⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 359th | 3.938⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 313th | 3.726⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 228th | 3.953⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 35🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
I did find that when I win it would be very easy but other than that the art is good and so is the game idea! Cant wait for more
That gameplay loop is great, and the synergy between the different card effects was immensely satisfying. The art on the cards is also incredibly solid. I did kind of feel starved for energy once I had a sizeable deck, but overall the mechanics were really well designed in my opinion. One of my favourite games of the jam so far for sure. Nice work.
Sound is good. There is a nice mood to the game. I'm sure the overall cocnept could be refined further and taken the extra mile. I got caught into it against my will.
The upgrading / shop is a nice touch, to make cards feel less of a random mess by introducing them slowly, nice touch.
It would be really nice if you could show me the entire card for each of my passive cards instead of just the name of the card. Even better would be if the passive cards highlight briefly whenever they trigger, which would also make the eventual combo more satisfying. I forget which is which based on name, but I knew that I wanted a 3 card combo so I just made sure to have 3 different names in front of me.
There were a few times that I clicked end turn and waited a few seconds to realize it had not worked. I think it might be something like ignoring the end-turn button while animations are in progress, but it's pretty common for me to want to play a card and then end turn immediately after.
The regular matches were a bit simple and grindy, since there isn't too much depth to just choosing which mill card to play, but the game is short enough that I think this is fine.
In the card game itself I like that it was just that. A card game, like e.g. MTG. I found art on cards to be very fitting into the Cosmos theme. The only thing that confused me at the beginning was the concept of "energy", might as well be "add one more move to a turn" or something similar.
Overall, great job! :black_joker:
Honestly, when I saw the combination at the card shop, I immediately wonder why the OP combo exists. When I saw the infinity deck, I immediately knew why.
Congrats on the submission.