Play BACKSTACK
BACKSTACK's itch.io pageJudge feedback
Judge feedback is anonymous.
- The Synth Roman Computer sim vibe was something from an artists mind. It felt good just looking at the screen. The old 80's windows and colors took me back. Nailed that retro feel. Very great work on the GDD, seeing the sketches, mood board and thoughts being even the audio really showed the process of making the game. Some people love these things, and many of the judges are same. Of course a tutorial would help, but mindlessly dropping cards to see if you win or lose as a good feel even without it. After playing a few rounds with no idea what was happen was just as good as reading through the instructions and figuring out the rules. There is still a sense of RNG regardless which way you play. It's all up to the cards you are dealt. Adding a brochure that you can click on to see the rules would have added and been a good tool. Music also really made you just want to lean back and enjoy the game. Great work, make more! Adding additional songs never hurt. This is a very good start, and could easily be developed into a game of it's own or into another game as a mini game. A good casino vibe. Keep up the good work and hope you don't stop developing game this was amazing.
Link to your Game Design Doc on Google Drive.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/10Yz-BqMdEHJduYwHJcP1QnOAvpw71ibEBF69gLOGDys/edit?usp=drive_link
Have you checked that your GDD is publicly accessible ?
Yes
Is your game set to public on itch.io so we can see it?
Yes
Summarize your game!
BACKSTACK is a card game that played in reverse. It has one play zone that players must share as they build up a stack of cards with differing effects. Cards are played by matching colors or icons to the top of the stack. Once all cards are played, the stack unwinds and effects are dealt. The goal is to reduce the opponent's health to zero.
Please explain how your game fits the theme.
BACKSTACK fits in the "only one" theme due to the fact that there is only one area to play your cards. You share the field with the opponent which adds an extra layer to strategy as you often have to work around their actions or respond in turn.
The controls were intentionally left simple with just one input needed to play: clicking a mouse.
Is there anything you'd like the judges to pay particular attention to?
All visuals were created from scratch or by heavily modifying public CC0 images from the Wikimedia Commons. All audio is custom made. The game was made with custom engine using Zig and Raylib
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Comments
Unique idea, it'd work fantastically as a physical card game too! I think it can make the player feel really smart once they figure it out. Keep it up!
It's a fun game, I'd love to play this with a friend I think! It did take me a bit to figure out what all the cards did though, since the cards aren't actually named in-game and the game instructions only refers to the cards by name with no pictures.
Thanks for playing; I'm glad you enjoyed it!
I agree the on-boarding experience could use many improvements. I plan to address some QoL in a post-jam patch
took me a bit to wrap my head around how to play, but I ended up getting it and beating the enemy. Great game!
Thanks for giving it a play! We were definitely lacking on the instruction side, so big props to you for managing to figure it out and beat the game despite that
Played and reviewed on stream!
Amazing art, and the looping track is catchy and doesnt get annoying. Some useful features would be a indicator for whose turn it is at the start, and some UI to name and explain the cards. Perhaps a right click popup, or as you thought of, a name on the windows window bar, along with an ingame dictionary incase people download the game and dont have a web connection. And very cool you made it in Zig.
Starts around 44:30
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2527695553
Thanks for playing! It was nice to see the VOD too.
I agree with all the QoL features you mentioned; we just unfortunately ran out of time to implement them. The window bar having the card name is a really good idea! I'll add it in a post-jam patch for sure