deck of doom by 0x0961h


"What a perfect day to start working on my Ludum Dare entry!", said I to myself 12 hours before the Jam deadline ends.
Ever thought what would happen if Balatro would be a roguelite top down shooter? No? Well, too bad, because I made a game that is exactly that for my Ludum Dare 58 Jam entry!
Like, I think, 95% of people who saw the theme I as well thought "hey, collect, that means CARDS!" And then I also wanted to make a top-down shooter for a long time. Roguelite shooter as well. And I also like cards.
So I decided, why not to do everything at the same time? And in 12 hours none the less. I have amazing time management skills, trust me (I don't. Please, help).
So in this game, you will... destroy monsters. Why? Because it's fun and best way to release some stress. You go around, you shoot stuff, you collect cards, you bank them, or you power yourself up. And that's pretty much it. Have fun and enjoy.
It's simple, it's not very complex, and I think it's just pretty plain and basic fun without any serious vibes of going five layers into metagaming. I hope you also have fun too. Enjoy!
Sadly I did not have time to make the remappable controls, so you are sadly stuck with * WASD for movement * Q for banking your poker hand * E for power yourself up with your poker combination * left mouse-click to shoot * and right-mouse-click to dash
If I'll have time to work on the post-jam version, I'll include the remappable controls, sadly I did not have time for that.
Combos and their effects
| High Card | Nothing |
| One Pair | Heal |
| Two Pair | Move Speed+ |
| Three of a Kind | Slow Enemies |
| Straight | Fire Rate+ |
| Flush | Damage+ |
| Full House | Invincibility |
| Four of a Kind | x5 Score Mult. |
| Flush House | Perm. HP+ |
| Straight Flush | Perm. Fire Rate+ |
| Five of a Kind | Perm. Damage+ |
| Flush Five | Ultimate! |
| Windows x64 | https://0x0961h.itch.io/deck-of-doom-ld58 |
| HTML5 | https://0x0961h.itch.io/deck-of-doom-ld58-web |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/58/deck-of-doom |
Ratings
| Overall | 299th | 3.63⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 172th | 3.717⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 25th | 4.13⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 345th | 3.739⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 358th | 3.087⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 590th | 3.217⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 29🗳️ | 24🗨️ |
Game feel was pretty nice. I was able to get a score of 6016.
@pro4 Oh yeah, it might be tricky, something I might want to tackle post-jam, I think. As for powerups, I've updated the post with the table of hands and what they do! Thank you for playing! :D
its a really unique mechanic to try to kill specific enemies and NOT kill others,
i think this idea can be expanded to a full game! one thing to help with this idea is to try to get the enemies to not bundle up together, as it makes the goal harder,
really cool idea!
You're making me wonder what other genres poker can be added to, I wouldn't have expected this idea to work as well as it does
Appreciated the difficulty selection (I am bad at top-down shooters). My best hands were normal flushes and a four of a kind. Never managed to get a permanent upgrade. Maybe more of the easier hands should provide permanent upgrades?
I agree with the others. The idea here is very interesting.
The game is quite frantic, so I usually just went for the one pair heal, since I found it quite difficult to keep my eyes on both the hand and the field. Anyway, I managed to reach level 57, lots of fun!
I seem to get the idea now after playing it, you're trying to bank the best poker hands? Initially there is only one card that comes up to you at a time and so I expected I wasn't going to get any choice in the matter and so didn't know what the purpose of the game was. Once there were lots of cards coming at me though, the game was too frantic to be able to make any choice at all without dying. I also got the impression that when I banked cards, it should increase my score somewhere but I couldn't seem to find that shown on the HUD.
In either case, you have done an amazing job with such a short amount of time!
@yoav-kagan Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Need to work on the enemies' movement algorithm. :thinking: Thanks for playing!
@arnazian Thank you! Everything is better with some poker in it :eyes:
@f2 Thank you! I do think it does need some rebalancing or maybe something different to make it less 'heavy' and more rewarding so to say.
@pengu123 Thank you very much! Balancing was always my weak point, but, eh, time for improvement I guess. :laughing:
@purrseus 57? That's a lot! :clap: And yeah, I agree, at some point I just stopped looking at cards and just was blasting. :laughing: Thank you for playing!
@raysplaceinspace Oh yeah, there's definitely a severe lack of tutorial and therefore the game mechanic is not explained properly. Score does increases, I just forgot to add any pop up message that you get this score. :sweat_smile: Thank you for playing!
@blue-pin-studio Yeeeeah, it's a bit shallow and looks more like a proof of concept rather than a big game. :sweat_smile: Thank you for playing!
Cool concept! Would be nice to discard the last added card, or even select with numpad 1-5 the cards you want to discard. Graphics and assets are nice and the gameloop is very fun. Cute little rougelike, good job! Also more weapon variety would be cool, even if temporary.
Really love the idea