Very impressed to see a mostly functional engine for a card game in the style of Magic: The Gathering! That's not an easy feat, and more complicated than a conventional JRPG battle system. This entry also engaged with the elemental theme. I played a round using the fire deck and won by eliminating enemy summons with direct damage spells while growing my own army of summons past parity.
Development of the game UI seems to be lagging behind the implementation of gameplay features, so additional work on the UI is the obvious biggest priority for future development. The indicators for available mana points should probably use graphical icons or have a mouseover tooltip to make it clear what they represent. The UI for displaying the cards in the player's hand is functional enough for now but would be a good candidate for future improvements - maybe look at Slay the Spire for a good example of how to display and select a hand of cards.
Finally, story and characters are difficult to integrate into a game like this, and there aren't a lot of good examples to use as reference. If the game will be a series of 1v1 duels, then competitive puzzle games like Puyo Pop or Puzzle Fighter might be good examples of how to introduce characters and establish a narrative. There's also an old MtG game from the 90's called Shandalar that was ahead of it's time and has a story and a slate of rival planewalkers to battle against - would recommend checking it out for inspiration if you're not already familiar.
Play game
Into the Aether's itch.io pageResults
Criteria | Rank | Score* | Raw Score |
Gameplay | #3 | 3.130 | 3.500 |
Audio | #3 | 3.130 | 3.500 |
Story | #4 | 1.789 | 2.000 |
Characters | #5 | 0.894 | 1.000 |
Overall | #5 | 2.147 | 2.400 |
Visuals | #6 | 1.789 | 2.000 |
Ranked from 2 ratings. Score is adjusted from raw score by the median number of ratings per game in the jam.
Comments
It feels that a lot of thought and effort was put into the card mechanics. I like the vibe of a complex card system. It really feels engaging. The music is really nice too. The effect will be multiplied if you pair the system with a story. Semi-static narrative parts and dialogs would fit the game atmosphere perfectly. So it’s interesting to learn if you planned something like this.
I haven’t yet progress a lot, actually. Maybe it’s only me, but the combat dragged me in, and I couldn’t get through. It would help me if there were a way to delve into the cards gradually. It may make sense to make the first combat short. Allow to win it in only a few turns. Just for the player to get that feeling and understand the core mechanics. And then introduce more creatures and cards. And by facing progressively strong opponents, learn the mechanics.
There was a strange bug on my side. The tutorial text was cut. Only about 85% of it fitted on the screen. The size of the text on the cards can be larger. It was a bit hard to read it on a laptop.
Thank you for the feedback! I wanted to put a focus on the gameplay side of things, and that took the majority of the time that was spent on the game so far. For the next jam I intend to, at minimum, have integrated:
- 3D models for the summoned creatures and permanent effects, possibly as figurines or statuettes to minimize the need for extensive animations
- A different visual theme for each element, along with fully integrated UI
- Music and SFX to round out the experience
- A full set of cards for each element to allow the player some semblance of choice in their deck creation
- Fully realized computer AI to provide at least somewhat of a challenge
- The story is there, but it's pretty much just a blurb right now. If I have time for the next jam (or the one after that if needed) I'm going to try to integrate it into the gameplay as well, with small bits of dialogue and seeming interaction between the player and the computer, as you mentioned. Along with that, I would try to integrate more of a playable tutorial section in addition to the purely visual tutorial that's been provided.
- I had some difficulties getting Unity's UI to work for me the way I wanted it, so I'll need to take some time to tweak that as well.
Leave a comment
Log in with itch.io to leave a comment.