Red and Black's Discommunicative Communication by chitoyuu
"Say something." Every 10 seconds.
A game barely made for Ludum Dare 51 Compo.
A card game about conversation, where you must say (play) something every 10 seconds! Play as Black, the discommunicative communicator, half-way coerced into a practice session with Red. Watch your partner's intents and keep the conversation going!
The game doesn't have BGM or any actual card art due to lack of time.
Gameplay
The game has a short integrated intro, but as a quick reminder just in case:
Game flow
- Every 10 seconds, both parties take a simutaneous turn. Whenever a turn starts, everyone draws a card from their Deck.
- Click on a card in your Hand (bottom-left) to select it. Selected cards are moved to your side of the Field (middle-left), from where it will be played at end of turn.
- Only one card can be on each side of the Field at the same time. If you would select another card while there already is one, the card you clicked on would replace the one currently on the Field.
- Each turn, when the timer runs out, the turn ends and the following happens:
- For each side of the Field, if it's empty, an "Awkward Silence" is generated and put there automatically. Not acting is itself an action!
- Effects on cards resolve.
- You gain or lost score equal to the sum of both cards' Values, depending on their Types. See below.
- Cards on the Field are moved to their owners' respective Discard piles.
- Everyone discards their leftmost cards to hand size (9).
Card attributes
- Each card has a Type and a Value:
- Assertive cards are yellow. They are signified by upward-arrow symbols in the top-left corner, containing their value number.
- Receptive cards are blue. They are signified by downward-arrow symbols in the top-left corner, containing their value number.
- Deflective cards are pale. They are signified by hourglass symbols in the top-left corner, containing their value number.
- Matches and Clashes:
- Assertive and Receptive cards Match with each other. Each Match made on the Field increases your score by the sum of the Value of both cards.
- Assertive and Assertive cards Clash with each other, so do Receptive cards with others of their kind. Each Clash made on the Field decreases your score by the sum of the Value of both cards.
- Deflective cards do not Match or Clash, but have negative value.
- Each card also has a Level, represented as the number within the red circle, in the top-left corner of cards. Cards can only be played if the current Conversation Level, shown on the score meter located at the middle-right of the screen, is higher than its own level.
Trivia
- Red always reveals the card she puts onto the Field at the start of turn. She's nice!
Tools
- Godot Engine w/ Rust bindings
- Krita
- ChipTone for the very few sound effects
Fonts
This project redistributes multiple fonts by jeti (https://fontenddev.com/fonts/), licensed under CC BY 4.0: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
- Cartridge by jeti
- Five by Five by jeti
- Kapel by jeti
- Lunch Menu by jeti
- Microserif by jeti
- Peanut Money by jeti
- Squarewave by jeti
- Poco by jeti
Ratings
| Overall | 164th | 3.588⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 319th | 3.118⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 60th | 3.868⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 207th | 3.662⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 94th | 3.926⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 381th | 2.344⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 109th | 3.288⭐ | 35🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 107th | 3.632⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 34🗳️ | 45🗨️ |
It does seem like only one of you got your ratings recorded though. Mind taking a few seconds to submit it again?
It is a quite lovely game. Hope to see a better tutorial at first but you can get the gist after first play trough.
After I played the card I just waited there. Love to have new conversation lines as we play the cards.
Hope to see this game in the future with cards art and more tech cards. Great work.
@deniz-aras Congratulations! Yes a Giant Otter of conversation you are. The game was coded to be able to respond to matches and clashes with conversation lines, even with variations and probability and all that, but alas, I just didn't have enough time to write the actual text. A classic case of LD fail. I wish I could have gotten around to drawing the card art too. Perhaps the extra format is for me then! Thanks for playing!
The game was hard to understand, but it became simpler after the second/third time... especially when I understood the intro was a semi-tutorial. To be honest, I still really didn't understand what the hell I was doing... but it was fun either way haha. I think the game would benefit a lot more if you have to play cards to react to the dialogue instead of physical cards they played as that would make the game stand out even more and make it a lot more unique.
One thing for me that bothered me was that there was so much information on the screen that taking in what I need to do within 10 seconds was challenging for me, especially in the beginning with no clear idea of what I was doing.
Good job on the game! I like it a lot :D
I will also submit ratings now. I couldn't earlier, because they weren't open yet.
The amount of information certainly seems to be a problem here. I guess though it's just an uphill battle trying to mix a card game and the theme together, and at some point I'll have to admit defeat and say I'm not that good a designer (yet). Gotta do better next time!
Thanks for playing and I really appreciate the detailed feedback!
feel free to check out our team too!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/cat-wave-run
Great job. :D
@daandruff Yes, in retrospect I did take a lot of risk with this concept, and in the end it didn't work out as well as I'd like it to. Then again, I wouldn’t have it any other way either! A game jam is a place where you're supposed to take risks, at least in my mind. Thanks for your kind words, and thanks for playing!
The idea of a co-operative duel card game is something I haven't seen before. I like the tradeoff of the draw3 card, but otherwise it's largely about responding yellow to blue and vice-versa, so it could use more strategic depth, maybe with more colors or tradeoff cards. I'm interested in a postcompo
The background art is very nice. Pixel text is kind of hard to read sideways; I thought a blue card said "initiate" but it actually said "imitate". Are all cards level 1 or am I just bad?
I'm not sure what the ending condition is. I had a few solid runs that just ended abruptly.
Love the art - obviously influenced by Shoujo Shuumatsu Ryokou which is always nice. Would've loved to get to know the characters better!
Overall I enjoyed the game a lot, and I can easily imagine a more polished version that's a real banger! Great job!
It's refreshing that 10 seconds seems relatively chill-paced compared to other, more hectic games in this jam.
Excellent work, especially for a Compo.
@vykri @alaah Thanks for taking the time to understand it! Yes, lack of strategic depth is a very valid criticism of the game in its state. Originally I envisioned the cards to be played face-down, with the actual type of the card having to be deduced from dialogue. I have since learned that this is just wayyyy too much content for one person to create during 48 hours along with all the other things.
@alaah Yes all the cards are level 1 indeed... I didn't even realize that I forgot to tweak those numbers until now. The game ends on the start of turn once you've reached a high-enough level, or once enough (too much) time has passed. Black-tufted Marmoset is actually the highest rank you can get, so you're doing very well. Congratulations!
@sleepymenace Yes, on-going dialogue is one among the many things this lacks. I wish I had more time to write all those text... I would've loved to get the characters known better as well. The art style is indeed influenced by the venerable fish. I for one welcome our potato overlords.
Thanks for all the feedback!
The concept of illustrating an Uno-like card puzzler with awkward conversations between introverts is very original and a really nice hook, add to this the Girls' Last Tour style and light-hearted mood and humor and it makes one want to chat with Red all day! I wouldn't be surprised to see such a game find success on Steam if largely expanded upon.
Being aware of the game's issues is one thing, but the most important is the takeaways for next time!
You have good art skills so this aspect will be completed faster in the next jam; why not focus on making music, game juice and having good readability/tutorializing for LD52? :wink:
You'll hit LD52, right? Right...? :gun: :smirk:
Congrats on the finished submission, it was fun!