Tiny creatures – Hidden hierarchy by N-lan
The tiny creatures love to play with each other. As we all know only too well, sometimes we have more energy for a day and sometimes less. The tiny creatures experience this too and it changes who wins in their game rounds.
The twist of the game: The card hierarchy constantly changes and is hidden most of the time. (Definitely no game to play while being on your phone.)
Card game (2-5 people): The „How to play“ and special cards are explained in more detail in the PDF file which you can find in the Zip folder with the printable cards.
First time participating in Ludum Dare. I would be very happy to know that people are actually playing the game. So please take the time (even if it takes some preparation time). It‘s worth it!
I hope you‘ll enjoy it!
P.S.: I uploaded the powerpoint ("my source code") with which I made the cards to Google Drive twice because it changes the fonts and in the Zip is the original version.
| Powerpoint that was used for making the cards | https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1679FdQLMC8vstosGnmvni5bDEljWaKA4?usp=sharing |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/56/tiny-creatures-hidden-hierarchy |
Ratings
| Overall | 55th | 3.975⭐ | 22🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 74th | 3.75⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 40th | 3.976⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 59th | 4.048⭐ | 23🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 60th | 4.068⭐ | 24🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 64th | 3.639⭐ | 20🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 35th | 4.053⭐ | 21🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 23🗳️ | 17🗨️ |
I wish there were more ways to change the hierarchy, it would make it a bit more challenging to keep track of, and it would make cards like Peek more valuable. To add yet more of a challenge (at the cost of introducing some hidden variables), maybe some cards could even change the hierarchy without revealing the information to everyone.
One suggestion for the manual: having the hierarchy laid out as suggested, in a line between the players, can be rather confusing (as from one player's perspective it's ascending, from the other's it's descending), maybe laying them partially overlapping (ie. "stacked") is the simplest intuitive fix for this.
I wanted to make a strategy-based game and therefore decided in favour of this type of game rules. We've already played it a few times with friends (with different numbers of people) and over time it becomes very difficult to keep an overview, as the hierarchy is swapped several times and the peek card was also very important. There have also often been challenges to the order. As you mentioned yourself, bluffing makes this even more confusing.
One adjustment I would make in a newer version would be that even with the 2 card swap card, you can't look under the cards.
The line arrangement makes it easier to swap two cards in the hierarchy.
These are suggested rules. Of course, everyone is completely free to play their own variants.