Nightmare Descent by DrSmey
Play the game in full-screen on the itch.io page linked below!
Nightmare Descent is an eldritch horror card game where the only way out is to wake up. Trapped in a surreal dream beneath reality, players must descend through shifting layers of madness. Every level takes you deeper into an unknowable abyss, where unspeakable horrors await.
Choose your path—face terrifying entities head-on with dwindling resources, or flee deeper into the unknown, hoping to survive just long enough to wake up. If you’re lucky—or cursed—you may awaken and escape. But every decision chips away at your sanity.
Will you reach the lowest depths of your dreams, confront them and wake up,
Or will the Nightmare claim you?
Contains 19 imaginative cards and 12 scary enemies!
Controls:
Hold Left-Click and drag a card to one of the 4 slots to select the corresponding ability on the card.
Hold Right-Click to inspect cards and learn about their abilities.
Left-Click the "Imagine" button to activate all selected abilities.
Known Bugs:
- Playing too fast might crash the game. Avoid messing with slots while the end of turn sequence is happening.
- "Dream Eater" Meditate action does -2 damage instead of 2 damage it is supposed to do
Credits:
DrSmey - Programming, Art, Design
Noctiluca - Art, Design
pentragon - Art, Design
Tyrrer - Audio, Music
| itch.io | https://drsmey.itch.io/nightmare-descent |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/57/nightmare-descent |
Ratings
| Overall | 119th | 3.984⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 128th | 3.871⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 177th | 3.75⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 347th | 3.828⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 239th | 4.063⭐ | 34🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 239th | 3.65⭐ | 32🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 383th | 2.944⭐ | 29🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 161th | 4.016⭐ | 33🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 54🗳️ | 43🗨️ |
Great art, and a very interesting idea. Congrats!
Few improvements I thought of (mostly qol):
The fights seem unbalanced, most of them are pretty easy once you get the hang of it and the last one is a bit too hard I feel.
I'd like it if you could replace the cards, as it is now, if you have one selected and change your mind you have to first remove it and then put the other card in the slot.
It would be cool to see all of the stats of all the cards (maybe on hover?), might be just my resolution but I only see the fear one and have to draw each card to see the rest (see screenshot)
Glad you like the game that much, we really wore ourselves out making this^^;
Yea, the balancing is pretty off, would have required a lot more time. If you get cards early and manage to get more, it becomes nearly trivial, while if you don't, it's very tough.
Swapping cards out of slots makes a lot of sense for sure, that would be a good change.
And you can see all stats of a card by holding right click, but yes, maybe there could be a better solution still.
Could use some balance polish with the enemies (I think it could be harder) and some more exciting and dynamic music. The biggest bug I ran into was the hand size - might be good to limit that anyways?
Fantastic work - you should be proud of this one.
Glad you like our game!
A condition for running out of cards should already exist. If your hand is empty, a "Scream of Terror" is added into your hand, which has twice the value of a normal "Remembrance" at the cost of raised heartbeat. With that, you can try to stabilize yourself and even get your "Remembrance" back.
It's very easy to have a hand overflowing with special cards right now, so this scenario shouldn't really come up much anyway.
Thanks, and yes balancing is not at a great spot since that requires the most time, which we didn't have^^
Enemies do get stronger as you progress, just like you described, and the boss has even more stats so you have an opportunity to spend the rest of your resources trying to defeat him.
The hand overflowing is not an optimal solution for sure. We had multiple ideas to fix that, but none of them could be implemented in time.
Game has a nice brutal resource limitation. It's pretty limiting when you are stuck in a battle with nothing but Remembrance, so I felt clever figuring out that a few turns down the road I would be able to maybe-win by venting all my cards and getting the Scream that can deal 2.
I think you got some extra mileage out of the air of mystery while I explored the systems, which is always nice in these small-scope jam games. I appreciated the lack of tutorial.
Nice work! I enjoyed this entry.
Obviously that's the *final* challenge.
BTW I've never played card games BUT now I can see why this is so cool! I quickly got the hang of it. Congrats for this gem of a game! Very hooky! (bow)
The enemies were creepy looking and the style they were drawn in was great and fitting for the uneasy feeling of the game. The sound effects were good and the soundtrack fit the vibe very well but I wish the animations for when the enemy increased the heartbeat or when I attacked the enemies would've had more oomph as now they felt a little weak. Other than that I really enjoyed the game and at the moment card games like these are one of my favorites so I was really happy to get to play one in the jam!