Otherworldly Delivery by Xwilarg
Welcome at your new job, here things are easy, you have an address, a package to deliver, boom you ring, get the money and that's all!
My first participation at the "compo" format of the Ludum Dare, I'm usually not much of an artist or a composer but hey, the assets were made with all the love I could give them
If you're a bit lost in the game don't hesitate to read the "Help" section in the main menu
Don't hesitate to let a comment if you have thing you liked or not, and if you managed to beat the game (and your high score in the secret scene if you managed to find it)

| Link | https://github.com/Xwilarg/OtherworldlyDelivery |
| Link | https://gamejam.zirk.eu/OtherworldlyDelivery/index.html |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/53/otherworldly-delivery |
Ratings
| Overall | 343th | 3.043⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 351th | 2.783⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 160th | 3.477⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 248th | 3.696⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 376th | 2.565⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 302th | 2.609⭐ | 25🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 65th | 3.659⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 320th | 2.818⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 13🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
If you didn't understand the damage system feel free to have a look at the "help" section in the main menu :)
Got 42 points in the secret level, felt like anothe inside joke xD
Congrats for your score of 42, I'm glad people managed to find how to access it :)
+ The dialogue after playing a card is nice in the beginning, but ends up being skipped as it repeats and kind of gets in the way of moving the bar.
+ I feel the colors should be swapped. It would be a feedback, when you are in the red zone it's dangerous, close to losing and when you are in the blue zone you can feel a bit safe, victory is close.
+ The images displayed in front of the message box, covering the text at one point.
Great variety of effects and compromises. Getting hit with the -100 dmg really hurt though. I was about to win, but then I lost :( It was fun and engaging, but the cards I was dealt felt unfair. I wonder if it was bad luck or if it was just difficult.
The scenes moved too fast for me to read/see most of the time. What I did catch was great. I really like the format.
I had hard time to do enough damage though. I'm probably just terrible :laughing:
I wish I could see what is behind the secret level.
Anyway, your game is quite addictive and well done.
The music is a bit repetitive and the visual simple but overall your game is just fun! This is the most important.
Good job :thumbsup:
@tudvari @ellaris The main keypoint about winning is trying to keep the rage low, for the "do nothing card" they are stuck inside your deck until you actually use them which remove them so don't hesitate to do so!
I'm taking note of the color feedback, not exactly sure what you mean by the dialogues getting in the way of moving the bar or images covering text?
@pincushion The -100 dmg is a bit like the ultimate attack of the boss, he can only do it once, but if you got hit with 100 it means the boss's rage sure wasn't at its lowest
Not sure what you mean by scenes moving too much, the text should be waiting for you to click before it disappear?
@clemall About the secret level, well don't repeat it but I heard there was something to scan that could lead you to the number you need....
If you have some example of these weird things I would be glad to know them (and maybe try to give you some small explanations if you want to try the game again)
It's to showcase an item during the dialogues
If you want to have a better experience for that part I suggest you to switch in fullscreen then :)
Also in case you didn't go further, this part is just the intro, the real game is after that
For the QR code I tried again and it works well for me, maybe try to open the game on fullscreen and try again?
It took me some time to understand the bar at top. Also the game feels a bit difficult.
Overall nice job!
Interesting take on the theme. And the joke about the spirit's appearance was a big hit for me! Has potential with many possibilities for amusing scenarios/arguments. had fun! :D
The "negative damage doesn't apply" effect is a little unclear. I would probably change the wording to "prevents self-damage."
The ideas you said are definitely things I didn't realize at first but would need to add if I were to improve the game further
And congrats for beating the game :)
The fact that rage is displayed in red and also on our side makes us think that it's our own rage despite what the help section says. In general, it's difficult to know which stat and wording belongs to what at the start, it's all pretty unclear. The graphics could also definitely use a touchup, and UI scales very weirdly with the resolution. There was an attempt though!
As others pointed out, the difficulty is waaaay too up there. Sure, absurd difficulty makes a victory more satisfying, but usually, in a game jam, people won't stay for very long on each game, if their goal is to review a maximum of them. Adding easier levels first would definitely help with that, as it would allow people who want to have a quick look to see what all of the game is about, but still give tryharders a challenge! I totally understand if time constraints didn't allow for this, as there's a similar problem on my very own game, but it's definitely something to keep in mind for next time!
Some other comments mentionned a card storage system, which could have definitely helped leverage the RNG nature of the game. Gosh, I even managed to decrease the god's health to **zero** in one game (or 100/200, depends how we see it I guess), and even this wasn't enough to beat him. The damage the god does at some points seem random. I get that it's some kind of multiplier of the rage onto the base damage value of the card or something? Does the boss also have a rage value? Displaying the base damage in parenthesis just after the modified damage would have helped to make it clearer. I have tried beating the game for over two hours after giving up. If your goal was to recreate the kind of rage one would get by playing KanColle events (if you know you know), then congratulations! You did it! I'm exhausted.
But overall, it's a cool idea! There definitely is a risk/reward system. Did I enjoy it? Maybe, after all I wouldn't have has spent two hours trying if it wasn't a bit fun, I guess? Also, I got 41 on the secret game. How it was hidden is pretty ingenious! Nice play on the theme too! You not only deliver a package, you're also delivering arguments!
While I myself don't have much experience, it is an honorable attempt for a game alone in less than 48 hours! It is an especially risky move to try making a card game in such a short amount of time, and I commend the effort. Good luck with your next game!
@oradimi Thanks for all your feedbacks!
For the U(I/X) I definitely agree that it could be improved but Unity UI system sure is... something I'm not really good at
For the rage text, it's actually the one of boss (the player don't have any rage meter), I feel like this whole thing was confusing but the big bar is some kind of common bar to you and the boss so even if his part of the bar reach 0 you still have to go to the rightmost side of it!
The boss damage are basically the base damage of the card multiplied by his rage
For the rage meter I didn't want to be too explicit on what was the exact calculation (which is pretty simple maths tbh) but maybe I should have
There is only one boss in the game so don't worry too much about missing parts of the game!
I'm glad that you liked the card name because I spent a good amount of time trying to find them, especially the ones for the boss
The main difficulty is that, it seems like I often do not get any attack cards after playing the cards that combo well with them (e.g. reduce negative damage), and I also will have periods of time where I simply do not get enough of a certain kind of card (e.g. sometimes I simply see no attack cards whatsoever, or no apology cards, etc).
I think this is because the cards are simply being chosen randomly every time from an overall pool, rather than chosen one by one from a deck, like a traditional card game. That is: there is no logic in the source code, from what I can tell, that ensures the player gets a balanced set of cards -- so it's all left to getting a lucky hand.
My suspicion is that this game would feel more balanced with just a traditional deck-of-cards system, where the player draws cards from their deck, and once the deck is empty, all the previously played cards are shuffled together into a new deck. Of course, there are other approaches that could be tried as well, such as enforcing some minimum rate at which players receive cards that can reduce rage.
I am curious how consistent you are at winning. That is -- if you play this game, can you win every time? I find it difficult to believe such a feat is possible, based on my experience playing it so far, but it's possible I am just bad at choosing the right cards.
Anyways... there is a lot of good stuff here. I like the double-sided healthbar, it flattens the distinction between attacking and defending in a very natural way. The rage system makes sense as a second variable that the player needs to manage, and I did find that I lasted longer when taking it account, although I still have not won.
I also liked a lot of the card effects. The way that the reduce negative damage card paired with different attack cards was cool, similarly the 1.5 damage card had some cool pairings. The compromise card in particular I think is very interesting. One thing I especially love is the way that each card is tied to some action within a debate. This is one of the elements of the compromise card I like so much -- it makes sense that it affects both parties equally, and then that leads to interesting gameplay when combined with the other cards.
Overall, lots of fun card mechanics here, even if the game ends up being quite difficult. :smile:
And I did find the secret game (I scored 33). Also, I got the QR code to work. I think that QR codes in a game, containing nothing but text, are a very interesting feature... kind of reminds me of the manual from Shenzhen IO that is downloaded as a separate PDF.
Thanks for your comment!
The draw of cards is indeed totally random and as you say it turned out not being that much of a good idea
On my side I win most of the games I play (even if they take a bit of time), since the jam nearly ended I guess I can reveal my big secret:
As you said it's really important to keep the rage low, when you reach 50% of the boss bar it'll do a very huge attack and if the boss rage is high it'll hit even harder, so if you manage to reach it with a very low rage you barely take damage, his strong attack is out of the way and you can continue to progress slowly
Also I noticed that some people ignore cards like the ones that negate negative damage on your side, but they can be really good in combinaison with others ones, like the one you mentioned in your comment, same thing for the one that lower the boss max HP, it allow to help progressing slowly
Also congrats for your score in the minigame, for the QR code the reason is actually that because of how I made the dialogue system it was easier for me to just display a sprite ; rendering text on it using my amazing 2D software (MSPaint) didn't work that well so I just went with a QR code