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What did you revive? What was your inspiration?
Our inspiration was the sensation of playing and learning a trading card game as a child, and not knowing all the rules but going with "what made sense". There was also always that one kid with a fake card who crushed everyone, so wanted to evoke some of that nostalgia
How do you play your game? Is controller required?
just a mouse!
What asset packs did you use? What, if any, content is AI generated?
No ai or asset packs, all made by us
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Comments
Really fun game with a great concept! I love that every card starts with flavor text and then updates to its real effect once you’ve played it. It captures that feeling of “I’m not sure what to do with this, but here it comes!”, and the old-school Yu-Gi-Oh and Inscryption vibes come through. The art, music and sound effects are impressive, and the variety of cards and battles is far more than I’d expect. It could work really well as a roguelike if you keep going.
A few things I noticed:
The UI needs some polish. Sometimes I couldn’t play a card unless I dragged it to just the right spot, and a few times I couldn’t play summons from my hand at all, so I never had anyone on the field to finish the battle.
The need to tribute for some summons isn’t obvious from the UI.
The effect text reads out very fast, so I missed a lot of the triggered effects. Tooltips or a log of recent actions would let players review what happened at their own pace.
Overall, a great job, and I’d love to see where you take it!
Thanks for taking the time to play! We’re so happy we got that vibe across with the game as that was really what we were trying to capture. I’m super proud of the team especially for the art and music, it really adds a lot to it. And I agree, a few people who’ve played it have said it would work as a roguelike and I’m seriously considering exploring that angle (once I’ve cleaned up the truly awful rushed code)
The UI for sure needs a makeover. I had an idea for a layout that included spell and trap card zones more akin to yugioh, and pivoted to the lane system maybe half way through but kept the old zone system resulting in it being too rigid for just four lanes. I’d completely redesign how the placing of cards and how cards understand where they are in relation to each other as a first step with taking this game forward tbh, as it’s resulted in a lot of bugs like you mention.
I’m kicking myself but yeah tributing was not explained at all, and it really should have been more than a tiny number in the corner. I’d probably give the player a pop up if you try to summon a costly card saying you need to sacrifice X monsters, that would’ve been enough.
And great idea, perhaps tightening in the screen and allowing you to pull up a log would help a lot, along with configurable speed of animations (think how the old yugioh games let you hold b to skip through phases quickly)
And thanks again for the feedback! Ever since I started game dev I really wanted to make a card game, so the great reception is very encouraging for me to take it forward into something more!
Hey ! It is a really very interesting concept, the game is fun and engaging, however UI could be made better
How would you suggest improving the UI? Admittedly it was a rush job, but I also found laying out the screen for a card game surprisingly tough to map out in my mind and put to screen, so any suggestions are welcome!
It was really fun.
It really captured that felling of I'm not sure what to do with this, but here it comes!
Thank you for playing! I'm glad you enjoyed it and that we were able to get our ideas across!
It’s a really impressive jam game! I love the mechanics, and the “learn what the card does once you play it” is a cool concept. Could work well in a roguelike if done right. I think it needs a lot of UI polish, but you could definitely do something cool with this game if you keep going!
I kept running into bugs with the Spiky-Haired Kid; it seemed like my game would softlock on certain actions? (Tribute summons also confused me for a bit, since the need to tribute is not obvious from the UI.)
Really cool touch that the Spiky-Haired Kid has other cheated cards than just the dragon, I noticed that his ~~pot of~~ greed drew three instead of two.
Thank your for the praise. I thought the same about a roguelike, perhaps I'd take it in that direction if I kept working on it but the original idea was something more story driven, but we didn't have time to realize that fully.
Yep the game is very buggy, and it was way worse a few hours before the submission date. Luckily the game is at least playable enough that one can understand what the point of it is, but would really like to iron out those issues.
And yeah, the whole game was meant to be more like this. Where each character has their own interpretation of what different cards do, hence the flavor text going away to reveal what _they thought_ the card did. We didn't have time to fully implement that either in a way that made sense, but there were elements of that left in for the spiky-haired kid fight so was cool someone spotted it!
This is super fun! It really evokes the yugioh and classroom card game feeling you describe. I'm grumpy I couldn't beat Darkly Magician even after multiple tries. The vampire recruitment effect should wooooooooork
Yeah perhaps it was a little too difficult looking back haha, the original idea was that he would literally be unbeatable outside of a niche combo the player could discover but no time for that sadly. The strategy as of the current build is just block his lane with monsters with high hp and pray
Y'all this is an incredible submission! It felt like the vibes of old school Yu-Gi-Oh (including POT OF GREED and Dark Magician) but the mechanics of Inscryption. The variety of cards, battles, mechanics, & unique sound effects was far more than I would have expected from a game jam submission. It was really clever that every card started with flavor text but after you saw what it did it updates to be the game text of the card.
Obviously there's some jank and very often I couldn't play a card unless I dragged it to just the right position, and I don't know how the dragon fight is possible without editing my deck, but the whole team should be very proud of this one
Thank you so much for the kind words! We all worked super hard on this game so we really appreciate the comment.
The idea we had was a lot grander than what we ended up with, there was meant to be deck customisation , and unlockable cards by performing certain actions, and the flavour text mechanic is sort of vestigial from the original idea that each character may have different interpretations of the flavour text, so revealed effects may be different. Would love to come back to this and implement these sometime
Woa so ambitious! You'd have to design so many cards (and do all of the art too!)
The music's really hype too!
Thank you! Our artist worked really hard to make all those illustrations on time. And I'm glad you like the music, too!
I got into a state a couple times where I didn't seem to be able to play summons from my hand. Spells seemed to consistently work fine, but I was never able to finish a battle as a result of never having anyone on the field to really do the work.
The art is quite cool and really does evoke some of the old-school early MtG designs for me.
I'm a pretty slow reader so a LOT of the mechanics from some of the summons triggering effects almost completely flew by me due to how fast the text reads out when the cards are played. It does give you that feeling of playing against a player that knows solidly more about the game than you do and you're just trying to process things on the fly as they happen, but it also just highlights the massive value that tooltips on the various mechanic can bring so that players can review what just happened at their own pace.
Thanks for taking the time to play!
We've never ran into the issue you mentioned first, really odd. Some cards require tributes to be played, maybe you only drew those and I didn't explain the tributing mechanic in the game so its possible (cards with a number in the top left corner require a tribute of X monsters, so if you have none you cant do anything)
Fair point on the third part as well, I did feel it was too fast and was implementing a system where you can speed up or slow down animations and stuff but didn't have time to finish it unfortunately. If I was to keep working on the game, i'd for sure add that along with some on hover details popping up and better explanation of keywords etc. but all we have now is a card game framework essentially
Hey, love the game! Loved also to use Wrath (but not of God) to clean the battlefield! Really cool game! Amazing assets too!
Thank you, I'm glad you liked our game! We were working on our assets literally until we had 10 minutes left to submit hahaha so we really appreciate the compliment!