Man this game is awesome!!! I love the vibe of the game and the premise is super interesting! I love playing poker with friends so when I played it in this game and each of the NPC has a distinct personality, I knew I was in for a treat! The art is also awesome and its super stylized and highly fits the vibe! The music, oh man where do I start, at first, I thought it was gonna be a generic jazz kinda vibe (which is totally chill) but then when that vocals came in during the poker table gameplay, its a whole different world. I got distracted by it for a second forgetting that I had to find the killer xD. If that song was put on spotify or something, I would've definitely add it to my playlist! I think my only complaint for the game is the bugs which for most of it was fairly minor but the game breaking bug on trying to accuse someone is sooooo unfortunate. I got stuck on the loading screen when I selected "did you do it?" which is so saddd, I really wanted to find out who but this just makes me want to play the game more (though this is very understandable in a game jam setting)! Overall, this was an experience for sure and I am superr impressed by the quality of the game made in 1 week! Awesome work!!
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Hold 'Em Up's itch.io pageResults
| Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
| Audio | #5 | 4.333 | 4.333 |
| Overall | #42 | 3.911 | 3.911 |
| Theme | #124 | 4.067 | 4.067 |
| Visuals | #134 | 4.267 | 4.267 |
| Innovation | #166 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Gameplay | #170 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
| Enjoyment | #255 | 3.600 | 3.600 |
Ranked from 15 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
How does the game fit the theme?
It's a murder mystery poker game where you must deduce the killer by learning the players' tells and asking questions.
What code and assets did you not make from scratch during the jam (if any)?
All assets and code were made by hand during the jam!
How many people worked on the game?8
Comments
Amazing vibes. Loved mix of pixel art, high detail art, 2d, 3d. Music and sound design is also on point!
The mixture of 2D and 3D gameplay and art, Absolutely loved it and was surprised! This awesome for a jam, had narrative, good music and followed the theme. Beautiful work u guys! <3
I loved the atmosphere and the visuals. Music is really good and it matches the atmosphere. Good work!
Wow, very impressed! The mix of 2d and 3d is attention grabbing, and the game seems well implemented. 5 stars all the way across. I did not uncover the mystery, but I'm going to save this one and come back.
I'm curious how hard it was to implement the decision making algorithm for the AI players? In our game (similar bluffing on poker hands, but with dice) we had to limit it to 1 opponent, and even then it got very complex.
I DID THATT!! Please check out our repo for the code portion of the AI
https://github.com/DylanPatrascu/HoldEmUp/blob/main/Assets/Scripts/Managers/NPCManager.cs
That's really cool you guys made your repo public! The personality dials are pretty neat - it looks like you're operating off percentages which should make the AI a bit less predictable. I think the really strong part is in your PokerManager too, which seems to allow decisions to be made of percentage? I'm impressed by that logic - the one in my game was much simpler since the hand sizes were fixed at 5 dice total with the 3 common ones being static and the 2 private ones having to reroll together. I precomputed the possible hands given the three common dice, but fought with not having a central way to evaluate hand rank (oof). The possible hands were put into probability buckets and tied to the amount of rerolls that the player and the AI had done to measure "believability" of a given bluff.
So there are a bunch of things in your decision functions and poker functions that I will try to learn from. Thanks for sharing!
Very cool vibe and atmosphere. I love how there is actual lyrics in the poker game. Sucks I can't go to the next poker game unfortunately because it is bugged.
Just retried and the poker AI was actually lowkey kinda cool. I wasn't sure whether if the poker games was foreshadowing who dunnit but I had a feeling. Now that softlock issue is fixed I am honestly really happy with the game. I'm not entirely sure what winning more chips does with finding the suspect, but winning poker is still something fun.
Genuinely something awesome!
I love the look and vibe of this game, but it sadly I can't seem to advance beyond the first poker game no matter what I try.
Edit: Thanks for the fix. This was a cool game with a unique concept. I figured out the mystery pretty quickly, but I never really felt the tells coming into play. Mechanically, it makes the game feel a little disjoint. A lot of fun, though, and like I said before I love the atmosphere it's going for.
LOVED the 2D and 3D aspect of this, the first time it went to 3D I literally said WOAH out loud. The music is on point, as well. The text was a bit hard to read, but all in all it was fun! The character artwork was also REALLY good
Love the audio and visuals! One tiny critique is I find the text quite literally impossible to read lol. I love the style but its readability its hard! If you dont mind could you also rate and review my game :). https://weazel1.itch.io/lieght-the-way
Having a game have both 2d and 3d elements is very bold for a game jam, well done. Nailed the atmosphere when sitting around the card table. At a few points it was a bit hard to see some of the cards on the table clearly, maybe a zoom button could have helped.
Won the round with a flush. But after that the game didn't continue. I wonder if there was a button I was meant to press hmm.
The music sounds great. Visuals look nice too, but some text may be a bit tricky to read with the font and background not contrasting enough with some words.
Overall a neat submission!
For some reason, I couldn’t do anything after sitting down at the card table. I couldn’t play cards or look down at my hand—it seemed like the scene got stuck. I also tried interacting with the other NPCs before going to the table, but the same thing happened. I’ve attached a screenshot of where I got stuck. None of the controls worked.
It’s clear that a lot of effort went into the art. I really like the scene around the card table and the stylized grainy look. If possible, please let me know when it’s fixed or if there’s a workaround—I’m very interested in coming back to play it!






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