Heart of the Cards by Profugo Barbatus
A Summoners Tournament? A great opportunity to prove your skill, and to have faith in the cards! Of course, your opponents are master summoners. By the time you've played a single card to the field, they've played dozens - Keep your wits about you if you want to succeed! Take down their Summoners Pot, and you're sure to win!
WADS and mouse to play, plus limited controller support once you're in the shooting gameplay. It's just standard FPS controls there, and there's sensitivity sliders in the escape menu. Alongside some basic help text. Sorry for the lack of tutorial, but this guy ate it all up!

Wew, what a doozy of a project! Somewhere in the first hour, we latched onto the idea of a stupid meme with the pot of greed card from Yugioh, and ran with it as a boomer shooter based in a card game world. Somehow, it worked, and we ended up making this little treat. We do intend to actually finish the other three duels in the tournament, but time cut us short to just one. This is our first 3d game in four years, so we learned a lot about what does and doesn't work on the fly, and that tanked a lot of time predictions.
If you're interested in a post-jam version with more levels, please do comment and I'll notify you all when its ready!
| 1.0 JAM Version | https://profugobarbatus.itch.io/heart-of-the-cards |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/55/heart-of-the-cards |
Ratings
| Overall | 627th | 3.525⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 293th | 3.775⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 1123th | 2.625⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 1096th | 2.85⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 676th | 3.6⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 333th | 3.472⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 513th | 3.625⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 32🗳️ | 7🗨️ |
As to graphics, I usually would be opposed to such a mishmash of styles (environment is a completely different graphic style than characters), but here it's not bad. Maybe because you have no time to contemplate the environment anyway :wink:
The character graphics and illustrations are very nice. Good lines, good colors. Just cool.
Overall, the game plays very well! Nice jam entry. I just wish there were some health pickups - but that's mainly because I suck. And I have only one question - how is it a **Duel** when I'm one and enemies are many :laughing:?
This game is fun! I love the art style, both in the menus and in game. Those fluff balls are cute as heck.
However... I NEED TO TALK ABOUT GAMEPLAY!! The projectiles are SLOW, perhaps TOO SLOW? I can explode my own projectile by walking forward, so it's like a snails pace projectile to me.
Speaking of the projectiles... I can see that my projectile makes an EXPLOSION when it hits something. I was sad when I couldn't rocket jump lmao, but it's understandable, especially for a jam. Physics are no joke!
You could have INSTANT REPLAYABILITY VALUE by adding a run timer. Stuff like this is great for speedrunning! *Let me speedrun your game* :smiley_cat:
This is also just my OPINION, an opinion backed by THOUSANDS OF HOURS of fps gameplay, but an OPINION nonetheless: auto-jump and auto-shoot would be very nice please and thank you :pray: Having to constantly hit these buttons doesn't do much for gameplay, and is taxing on fingers/wrists.
Overall I loved it, it's good, good job, you did good! I'LL PLAY YOUR GAME MORE JUST TELL ME WHEN YOU UPDATE IT!! :smile_cat:
One thing I changed: the crosshair could be replaced with a diamond shape; it would remain inconspicuous but wouldn't get lost in the heat of battle (it's more of a cosmetic thing). Also, the jump could be slightly weighted down; there's a sense of weightlessness.
I want that update with new levels =). The game is wonderful =)
There seems like a lot of potential here, but right now the gameplay is painfully slow. There are two key issues:
1. The projectile speeds are insanely slow
2. The enemies have a LOT of hp given the low max DPS
I really liked the mood, the graphics, and the level layouts. There's a lot of potential here if the fundamentals of shooting were a little more solid.
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I adapted the to very slow pace by just switching to ignoring enemies and speed-running the zones. I did win the level on my first try. In the final summoning room, I just jumped like a maniac and focused the summoning pot until it was dead.
Nice entry!
I've seen the other comments mentioning the slow pace of the game, and while I do agree that the game is slow, I think it also stretches the amount of content available (given the 3-day deadline) to an appropriate pacing. Of course, if more levels are to be added, then it might get exhausting playing at this progression speed, but at the game's current state (i.e., having just one level), I thought I was able to enjoy it for an appropriate amount of time.
One feature I did consider while playing was some sort of SFX for progressing through the next door, or some kind of indication that there has been some change to the map. Currently, this level is small enough that the player can just zoom around looking for the next open door, and the doors open in a relatively obvious sequence. Thinking about larger and more complex maps, however, I think the player would appreciate some kind of cue that they can stop looking for enemies to shoot and start looking for the next room to explore.
I enjoyed the experience overall! The Kuriboh sprite is very cute, and from a game dev perspective, I'm inspired by the 2D aesthetic that also circumvents the pains and tedious labor of 3D modeling. The SFX were satisfying, and I feel like I accomplished something by defeating the final boss. Great work!
The game feel of the game is interesting, I love the flow of the controls. The art is evocative, I grew up playing YGO so for me it felt like my chance to interact in non-expected ways. 2D in 3D worls is just a fun, Wolfenstein way to tackle 3D in jams, I honestly liked the aesthetics there.
It feels a bit slow, but I feel like it was structured as a vertical slice of a bigger game, and I feel it works well in that sense.
Honestly fun, more than a meme game, it was a fun game and I enjoyed it. Thanks for a bit of a nostalgia trip!
The graphics were wonderful, too!
Edit: NVM I'm giving you 5 stars in each category I changed my mind khahaha