Ars Vocandi by abcdef65g
UPDATE (April 18th): We've managed to track down and fix some of the game-breaking bugs regarding the summoning and battle systems, which kept some players from having a good experience.
We have also started working on a post jam version with more polished interface and game design updates! Please give it a try if you want a better version of the game! It's available on the itch.io link below.
The original Jam version will remain archived and playable here in the Ludum Dare website, for rating purposes.
Description
Summon an army of creatures and overwhelm your opponent! In Ars Vocandi, you use an ensemble of creature cards, totem cards, spell cards and equip cards, in order to destroy other creatures and lower the opposing summoner's life points. Totems, spells and equips can give creatures a powerful edge and tip the scales in your favor.
Each creature card has three stats: Strength, Finesse, and Magic. When declaring an attack, a creature also declares which stat they will be using for this round of combat. Creatures battle each other by throwing dice for every point they have in that particular stat, and comparing the results. This makes the outcome of every creature combat unpredictable, as weaker creatures can still score wins under unfavorable conditions. A summoner can also choose to be attacked directly instead of blocking that attack with a creature, which can be risky but useful to protect your creatures for a possible comeback next turn.
Made by a two-person team for Ludum Dare 55. We ended up making over 70 cards in the design phase, which made for a large amount of necessary art assets to make in only 72 hours. Instead of cutting back on the number of planned cards, we caved and used AI tools to generate the art for the cards in the game. All other graphic assets were made by the team.
How to play
The game is fully playable using the mouse, interacting directly with the cards and buttons in the user interface.
The user interface works as follows:
| Updated Post Jam Version | https://rpegames.itch.io/ars-vocandi |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/ars-vocandi |
Ratings
| Overall | 858th | 3.321⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 895th | 3.125⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1053th | 2.786⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 779th | 3.429⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 645th | 3.054⭐ | 30🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 932th | 2.417⭐ | 26🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 1053th | 2.962⭐ | 28🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 33🗳️ | 41🗨️ |
I guess you have the same issue I had with my game when publishing it. Make sure to
- pack it as a ZIP index.html is at the root-level aside the folders created by Unity
- disable “Data Caching” when creating the WebGL build in “Player Settings” -> “Player” -> “Publishing Settings”
I was excited to play tho, I love card game games.
Maybe you should upload a desktop executable ?
Drop a browser one or an executable?
Looking forward to it <3
The web build is now working like it should. Sorry to everyone who couldn't play before! In the future, we will start uploading executable builds as well, as a safety measure.
Very impressive, especially within the limited time for a Ludum Dare! :)
- Since you like trading card games @locksmitharmy, give it a try now.
- Seems to have been fixed @0x-void-x0
This was really fun, short but fun. the idea is simple and and comes tegether pretty clearly.
some instructions or tutorials would be nice, you attack by clicking one of the 3 colored gems at the top of the cards, you defend by selecting the card that will defend. even though the only options aparently visible is take direct attack... you can still select a card to defend with.
sometimes [Next Phase] is pretty genaric, if the phases had names so I knew whos turn it was. one time I got to draw 2 extra cards and it just kinda wouldnt let me do anythng else... except click next phase... it made no since, I wanted to either use those cards I drew, or attack as I hadnt done that yet... but once I clicked, [Next Phase] it was still my turn and I got to attack... so a bit more ridgid or name the phases
Player summon phase, player attack phase, enemy summon phase, enemy attack phase... or something...
Overall, I really enjoyed it. What did you use to make the cards?
I recently wrote a card maker software that might make it easier to update your deck if you are interested:
https://lsadevelopment.com/Software/Instructions/SimpleCardMaker.html
Anyone reading this is free to use it :)
Great job on this game!
Was just clicking things and upgrading things, but didnt know how attacking worked our how its decided which monsters stats does what.
Maybe a simple tutorial for each phase in the corner of the screen would have helped. Or just a help button that would have taken you to a simple graphic explanation of the rules.
I've been able to play a few games and enjoy myself, so it's a good game even for a novice.
Great job!
Some comments:
- The combat was pretty confusing at first (I skipped the tutorial on this page). An in-game tutorial would have helped.
- It seemed a bit weird that there were no costs to playing cards, so you could always play everything in your hand.
- Music is nice and the UI is decent. I didn't like the Word-Art style text ("Player turn").
- I liked the idea of the 3 elements.
- There were some cards that said something like "+1 to magic", but the card colour didn't match the attribute being upgraded.
- There was a bugged card in the human deck (0 stats, no image, no text)
Overall, nice game with some interesting ideas. Nice work!
I would have never dare entering a game jam with the idea of doing a card game with FIVE decks!
On this note, congratulations.
Nevertheless, I have pretty harsh remarks to do on your design:
-No cost for the cards means little to no strategy. You're just play them when you got them.
-Multiple remarks on the attack system. The three capacities principle has a lot of potential, even if it is a little tricky to grasp. With more gimmicks, side objectives, multiple health bar, or auto block or debuff or forced attack of certain types maybe, it could have a lot of personality.
-The dice idea is interesting, but randomness is not something I am personally searching in a strategy game. Could work for an auto-battler, or with less shift (using d3 instead of d6 for example), but at this moment, it is just attack without thinking.
-There is no way to come back once you played all your cards and have no monster left while your opponent board is full. Even if you play a crazily strong monster, you are at the mercy of your opponent who can just ignore you and respond with capacities you can not defend against. This issue may be resolved with new card types, or with a system of rounds you have to win, or with bonus, such as auto drawing, you get if you get damaged.
Muster your ambition and you may give birth to something truly interesting.
That being said, as an avid MTGer, loved the game. Took a little to understand the play. I think I confused upgrade with summons lol. But once that got rolling had a blast and played several rounds!
Nice card game ! good job on the IA opponent ! It's lacking many feedback (when you select a card, when you click on a button, what action is possible)
But overall it's a nice card game jam !
* I agree completely, the rules were pretty confusing without any help. So we've added a tutorial, and also fixed some gamebreaking bugs that kept players from being able to attack. The updated post-jam version also has the current phase displayed in the UI, and a lot of improvements regarding player feedback, like making it clear which cards can still attack and where to click to declare an attack.
* @ryrumeli made the card template using Photoshop, and I tried my best to recreate it in-game by dressing a card prefab with the details of each card.
* Your Simple Card Maker tool looks great! It's surprisingly easy to use (though I guess the name impies it's not difficult). We will definitely play around with it.
@bravelytyped @laszlotimar @moritz-jaeger I understand the confusion about the rules, not to mention the bugs still left in the version we managed to upload in time for the jam. We've added some tutorial images to the page and in the post-jam version to try to make the gameplay make more sense. Thanks for playing!
@k-toll Thank you for the kind words! We were worried it turned out to be a complicated game, but it's a relief you found it somewhat intuitive enough. Glad you enjoyed it!
@rob6566 I really appreciate the detailed feedback! Now I need to check out your card game!
* Sorry for the lack of an in-game tutorial. We've left the jam version as-is, but added the same tutorial in this page to the post-jam version.
* The original idea was letting you summon cards at will and make the game feel fast and aggressive, with the downside that you will draw more cards next turn and deck out sooner (there are only 30 cards in the deck). THe pros of summoning more monsters seem to outweigh the cons though, so it's something that could be revised later on.
* I agree! The UI was pretty much a last minute thing, hehe. We will look into upgrading the UI in the future.
* Changing the card colour was something we forgot to do before the deadline. That said, card colours are associated with card type (between creature, equip/spell/upgrade/totem), so the equip bonus sadly wouldn't match the attribute anyway. Maybe we should change the text colour or add an icon to make it clearer which attribute is getting boosted...
* Ah, maybe a bugged card slipped through the cracks! Thanks for letting me know, I'll double check the cards in the deck.
* We designed the game to be more aggressive and let you summon freely (after all, summoning is the theme!), since many card games have slow starts. The original idea was to punish a player for using all of their cards too quickly by forcing them to draw more in the next turn, making it so they will exhaust their deck of 30 cards faster. But we couldn't implement the multi-draw effect in time, so there are slim to no disadvantages to using up your hand in the jam version (it's working as intended in the post-jam version though). As you said, this does make your strategic options quite limited.
* Thanks, we like how the attack system turned out. We have some ideas for future card effects with gimmicks similar to what you suggested, such as forced attacks or debuffs.
* The randomness aspect is far from perfect, we agree with that. But before overhauling it with less shift or discarding it completely, we would like to try adding more cards that can influence the results of the dice and see how the game feels then. There are currently only 2 creatures that have any effect on the dice, and they aren't very strong to begin with, so I think there is still a lot to test.
* We've added a system of drawing up to 4 cards when your hand is too small in the updated version of the game, and it helps quite a bit with comebacks. I like your ideas though, maybe a round system or auto drawing upon getting damaged could help.
@flyingkaida Thanks for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed the game, even with all its rough edges! We've improved the AI in the updated version to be a little less dumb, but not too much, haha. I had to cut A LOT of corners to make the AI work in a short time, so the fact it doesn't do too badly is already a win in my book.
We plan to add a deck builder soon! Playing against other players sounds like a very involved update to the code base though. We'll look into it!
@platore Thanks for the compliment! Yeah, I agree about the lack of feedback. We've improved that aspect a lot in the updated version, but we'll try our best to make the player experience better.
Love the update btw, helps clear alot of things up.
got some nitpicks for ya.
- The "You Win" is on a layer under the cards... so its hard to read if you have alot of cards when you win
- One time I wanted to see what monsters could be upgraded with one of my upgrade cards. I decided I did not want to use it, but couldnt go back :( I ended up using it on a monster I did not want to cause there was no option (that I could see) to cancel the upgrade once i selected the card
- last but not least... can you release it as downloadable? <3
this is probably my favorite game in ld55