Holo Friends by ColeSlaughter

[raw]
made by ColeSlaughter for Ludum Dare 58 (JAM)

LD58<em>HoloFriendsbanner</em>LDpage.png

A limited set of Holo Friends Trading Cards just dropped exclusively at your local game store! You won't want to miss out on these exciting promotional double holo foils! Think of that thrill; pulling an ultra-rare limited release card - think of how much that card might be worth! You start craving it so bad you might forget about other priorities... but that flood of dopamine is worth a little sacrifice. Try not to let your life completely fall apart, though, so that you can keep collecting and selling more cards! You need this.

Holo Friends is a game where you open card packs as a way to survive! Put the value of cards towards your happiness by placing them in your personal collection, use them to pay off bills and other expenses or just save them as cash to buy more cards. Every day is a little harder, but at least you have packs to open... for now.

LD58<em>MainMenuBG</em>LDpage.png image2.png image.png packOpen.gif UR_Wife.gif

Lose yourself in this epic card collecting gacha survival challenge and collect as many ultra rares as you can!

Credits

Jared Slawski - Engineer

Stephen Rudd - 3D Artist

Andrew Rudd - 2D Artist

Bora GenelBrainoid - Audio

Ratings

Overall 85th 4⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Fun 225th 3.622⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Innovation 120th 3.75⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Theme 33th 4.351⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Graphics 24th 4.595⭐ 39🧑‍⚖️
Audio 57th 4.097⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Humor 52th 4.083⭐ 38🧑‍⚖️
Mood 155th 3.956⭐ 36🧑‍⚖️
Given 20🗳️ 29🗨️

Feedback

rhewid
Oct 06th · 23:06 UTC
Seems you have an old build for HTML5 cause it looks different than what you have on your screenshots. Will play the final build tomorrow. Really cool concept. Hopefully I can check my collection in the actual game :D

![4.png](///raw/0b3/21/z/6e4ab.png)
rhewid
Oct 06th · 23:16 UTC
Ok so I refreshed the page and the new build was online. Great artwork! Would be cool to have a open all booster pack button. Maybe right-click to sell automatically or when I hover over the card pressing a key on the keyboard to sell, add to collection would be cool. Bills are not worth to be paid down immediately but rather keep them around at low prices. Cool concept overall, I guess its an endless game, right?

![5.png](///raw/0b3/21/z/6e4fd.png)
Maksim Shalaev
Oct 06th · 23:31 UTC
Addictive game, from interesting people, I hope that you will continue to make the same high-quality content.
Ulziton
Oct 06th · 23:39 UTC
Amazing game!!!
kkritikov
Oct 06th · 23:53 UTC
Cool game with engaging gameplay! Opening cards feels fun and satisfying, and the core idea is really great.
The only downside is some balance issues — you always end up in profit when drawing cards, and it’s actually easier to avoid paying taxes since happiness is easier to farm.
april21
Oct 07th · 00:00 UTC
wow this is so addictive, well done
straw
Oct 07th · 00:25 UTC
This was really fun - played about 15 days. I think there may be some balance that could be achieved with not paying a bill with $5 left to go until that last day holding a slot (maybe thats supposed to simulate holding off paying bills haha) but also there could be more to the collector theme if you had a way to look at which cards you have collected that might end up changing what you sell or put into savings, and make it harder to sell the shiny rare cards! Great job :D
Miguel Monteiro
Oct 07th · 00:54 UTC
Cool game, loved the premise and the artwork! Its missing a way to check out the card collection though 🥲
Franciscorp
Oct 07th · 01:11 UTC
It is a fun game, I would have liked to see a collection or some type of progression such buy more cards each day, or expensive packs with some risk/reward. Lovely game, amazing art work! Congrats! Keep it up :3
Matthew Rose
Oct 07th · 02:51 UTC
Totally unrealistic, no way I could ever make a profit cracking packs XD

Awesome art, I really liked the sink one. Great work!
ljol3
Oct 07th · 04:22 UTC
Love the artwork and style!

It eventually became easy once money stopped being a major problem.

I really wish there were more packs to open/cards to get
BadPiggy
Oct 07th · 16:47 UTC
Tried a number of times and couldn't get past day 3 lol ( Was playing the post-jam version ). That's fine though, I'm usually not the audience for this kind of game, so take everything I say with a grain of salt. None the less, this was still very damn cool.

Absolutely loved the presentation, let it be audio or visual. The art was beautiful all around, let it be the cards or other things like the bills, happiness bag etc. If I did have to nitpick, I kinda wished the bag you put your cards into stood out a little more from the environment more. At first I didn't notice it was a bag since it kinda blended into the environment. ( Probably just a me-thing )

I also couldn't really tell at first that you could put cards into your bank account ( again, probably just a me-thing ). Still, once I really understood the core loop of the game, it got really interesting. I also like the whole meta-story underneath everything of needing to balance life with a crippling gacha addiction lmao.

All in all, I'd say this was a damn good entry. Kudos to all of y'all


Note : May want to add the link for the LD page to your itch page, if you haven't already
graebor
Oct 07th · 21:25 UTC
Extremely satisfying to play, love all the visual polish. Great job and thanks for the dopamine.
Andreadbx
Oct 08th · 21:01 UTC
Visual polish is top tier! About the game itself, it's nice, but the gameloops gets a little bit repetitive on the long run, but this is a great base to improve upon, great job cowboys!
raysplaceinspace
Oct 09th · 01:52 UTC
The cards look beautiful :) I paid off the mafia on my first day!
Foursay
Oct 09th · 03:18 UTC
Top-notch as always! I made it all the way to day 7+, though I think I might’ve hit a bug, maybe I grabbed the wrong version of the game (was playing web version). My best strategy so far is to buy all the card packs and gacha them nonstop, pay the bills first, and not stress about happiness since it’s easy enough to recover. Really appreciate the attention to detail in the cards, the visuals truly shine there. Great job as always!

If there’s an post jam update coming, I’d love to see even more variety in cards or maybe some late-game twists to keep the tension going that I need to make active decision, or I can keep some cards in my gallery because they are well made and I wanna COLLECT THEM! Either way, it’s very polished and addictive experience!

Here's my bugged game btw ;)
![Snipaste_2025-10-08_20-18-21.png](///raw/202/02/z/6f099.png)
Blue Pin Studio
Oct 09th · 06:20 UTC
I could sit here for hours doing this! My favorite aspect of the game are the juicy sounds and juicy vfx on the cards. Don't forget to wishlist replicat and whatever else that freak Brainoid is schilling these days
Taximan981
Oct 10th · 08:18 UTC
Wow wow wow, what an amazing game! I loved every second of it! The polish, easy to understand mechanic, general UX, all spectacular!
Sharky3188
Oct 10th · 13:50 UTC
Really great game! Love all the artwork and audio. The overall polish is really solid.
Super strong work on incorporating the theme so well into a really fun game idea.

Could I ask how you guys managed to do the pre and post jam update screen on your itch page? Really cool you can do that, i didn't know you could.
🎤 ColeSlaughter
Oct 10th · 15:42 UTC
Hey @sharky3188! That was actually done using a tool called JamPack, created by a fellow jammer named @badcop. :slight_smile:

We were clued into it a few days ago, and we agree it's awesome (and also super easy to use)!

If you'd like to use it yourself, you can check it out here! https://badcop.games/jampack/
Sharky3188
Oct 11th · 01:15 UTC
@coleslaughter, @badcop, thanks so much. Looks great!
DaveCo
Oct 11th · 15:54 UTC
This game is INCREDIBLE! There was a surprisingly fun amount of strategic depth. The one piece of feedback I'd give is that it seems like there is a type of pack gives worse cards than the others but maybe that's just my bad luck.
UnitedFailures
Oct 11th · 16:03 UTC
Loved this game! I got to Day 11 with $6k when I stopped playing. I fell into the winning strategy of just ignoring all my bills and pocketing all the cash. It's nice to see a game that teaches valuable life lessons!
NBumgardner
Oct 11th · 19:19 UTC
Well done with the card system to support partial art, full art, holographic, and 3D rotation. How much is in 2D versus 3D to be able to tilt cards?
LDJam user 374028
Oct 12th · 11:26 UTC
Bruh, please end my mysery (ToT). I can't stop winning. This game has no end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUqFpPj7jOs

![stopthegatchas.png](///raw/c05/b5/z/6f4ea.png)

Hey, great game! Graphics, sound and gameplay flow are on point for a good mood. It's very addictive but the most boring part is opening the booster packs. I am definitely not a person who feels the joy of opening booster packs, unlike my fellow coworkers with that POKéMON TCG mobile game. So making a button for skipping that part would be a QoL improvement. What I did really enjoy was doing the math to be financially responsible. Uhh, what else? Oh, yeah! I have an ultrawide screen and playing fullscreen crops the UI, so fixing that would be cool as well. I played the Jam version btw, so maybe you've already fixed that. Good job, guys!

Nice Gardevoir plushie in the back there btw!
X2SHADOW
Oct 13th · 21:11 UTC
Damn, this game is very addictive :D I love it so much! Really good job guys!

![day20.jpg](///raw/5f4/46/z/6f5da.jpg)

![day27.jpg](///raw/5f4/46/z/6f5db.jpg)

P.S. I played PostJam version
Nija463
Oct 15th · 17:11 UTC
Great job! I really like how the FX shine and the overall polish of the game. It truly captures the feeling of collection card game, where you can pick up each card and appreciate how beautiful they are.
If more versions of the game are planned, I’d suggest adding a feature to view your full collection and see which cards you’re missing; it would also be great to open more than six packs at once; or to reroll packs with different rarities, such as common, rare, or epic, to help complete the collection.
MateusBoga
Oct 17th · 21:10 UTC
It's like an art collection with a game built around it. The graphical side is definitely the strongest. Thanks for coming to the stream! Here's the VOD: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2594438643
Aleksey Salion
Oct 20th · 20:00 UTC
Awesome! I remember in my 20 I worked in a local board game store, and as a part of the job, I used to organize a small pokemon tcg events every week. A loot of cracked boosters and happy faces and I felt like this game gave that feeling once again. Every aspect of the game is top-notch!
YibiRabbit007
Oct 21st · 04:34 UTC
Wow, the opening and animations are super cool. I collected cards to meet the requirements, but obviously I couldn't collect enough cards completely, so by the third day I had no money left. Damn this overspending XD
Trexxak
Oct 25th · 18:41 UTC
https://youtu.be/9zfhmMLzktc

https://youtu.be/HK0ZsD7rFzI

I am in a love-hate relationship with Uncommon Cards.