A-Card Shooter by Markus
A Deck Building Twin Stick Shooter
This Game is all about shooting enemies.
But:
This is really hard. You will need the help of powerups to survive the enemy waves.
The crazy thing about these Powerups: You can select, which ones you want! In the deck building screen you can buy new powerup-cards and use them (and the cards you collected in the arena) to tweak your deck.
How many waves can you survive?

About us
We are a group of seven students from Germany and this is our first LudumDare in this constellation. However, some of us have already participated in up to eight LudumDares. With this entry we wanted to explore Unity, so that we could concentrate on gameplay.
Thanks for playing. We appreciate your feedback!

Music:
Cyborg Ninja & Dangerous Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
Changelog
v1.0.1
- Require user to hold "Reset Game" to confirm
- Increase visible area behind player while walking "backwards"
- Disable "Add to Deck" button when player deck is full
- Reduce purchase sound volume
- Play purchase sound when upgrading deck size
- Prevent grenades from colliding with bullets
v1.0.2
- [Porting] Add Android version (.apk download)
Notes
- The in-game UI is not scaled relative to screen size, so we recommend playing in full screen
- The Linux build seems to have input issues. You can always use the Web Version instead.
Controls
- WASD - Move
- Arrow keys - Shoot
- Left Shift + Arrow keys - Use cards
- Escape - Quit Game
- Space - Skip death screen
Ratings
| Overall | 336th | 3.689⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 247th | 3.689⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 716th | 3.203⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 764th | 3.347⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 536th | 3.541⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 556th | 3.015⭐ | 36🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 599th | 2.857⭐ | 37🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 700th | 3.139⭐ | 38🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 61🗳️ | 30🗨️ |
One thing I particularly liked was the mechanic where taking damage reduces your card slots.
The one nitpick I have is that the card game element feels a bit forced in this game. The cards could have just been power ups, items or abilities. Maybe there should have been some kind of deck element or something to make it feel more like a card game. But maybe that's just me!
Overall, nice and very polished game for a marathon!
I wish you had the chance to start with a card or two just to get the hang of things, and there is an issue that the UI takes up a lot of screen that you need to see enemies
The card collection was super interesting and engaging though, as was balancing quick cheap cards and longer duration expensive ones. The health meter being hand size was also pretty innovative. I would love to see something like an enemy drop that refreshes cards you've already used, to give your deck some staying power.
Overall, extremely innovative and interesting! I'd been toying with an idea like this myself, and I'm pleased to see it well implemented.
Nice implementation.
Good Luck and try our implementation
of Card Shooter : https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/tequila-gun
My only complaint: WASD is hard to use on an AZERTY keyboard, if you also bind "UP" to "Z" and "LEFT" to "Q" the game could be equally played on AZERTY and QWERTY keyboard :)
On the downside, the shop menu is functional, but not very good (it could show more cards and only show the cards that you already own).
I think if you add some procedural level generation and have chests that drop rare/legendary cards that can't be bought would make this a awesome roguelite.
Those damn ninjas.
- The difficult grows really fast, the ninjas have tons of damage!
Pros
- I loved the shadows
- The use of colors is wonderful
- The sound is nice
- The SHIFT + Direction was easy to understand, in less than one minute I got it
Congratulations! Your game ROCK!
Interesting idea to be able to build a deck of powerups to use whenever you need. Aside from the graphics, which I found a tad boring, this game is worth building upon if you wish.
Interesting idea to be able to build a deck of powerups to use whenever you need. Aside from the graphics, which I found a tad boring, this game is worth building upon if you wish.
Overall, a great game! Be proud of it
Come check out our game we are still trying to get to 20 votes!
https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/41/seadogs-working-title
It would feel like a card game if you'd have to create your deck and use it throughout the game, and gold would allow you to buy new cards and insert them into the deck, instead you buy upgrades and they pop up sometimes from the enemies
One thing that hit me up right into my face is the excessive screenshake, there was a little bit too much of it, i kind of feel that this also affects my own games and i want to calibrate the screenshake myself.
Overall it was a good game to play and i like roguelikes a lot so i will hit that 5 star on Overall! Great job man :)
As said, the deck based ability system is great. It acts as a pre-mission loadout screen and dynamically changes each match based on the order which the abilities are dealt in. Certain waves can be defeated easily with certain abilities, but do you have them at the ready? Card slots doubling as health is the master stroke; healing cards are actually useful. The shield is my favorite as it takes actual skill to use, brilliant!
The graphics are standard pixelated mush, not a big fan yet they are serviceable. The effects and particles are a plus. Audio does ok too, oddly enough the deck menu music and the level music are in completely different styles? Sound effects are somewhat grating.
There are many issues though, in no particular order:
- The deck-building menu is very busy. I would hide each card panel in the deck until you actually buy and add one. This would also make it easier to see which cards are currently in the deck.
- Path-finding! The terrorists get stuck on walls all the time. Unity has a build in solution for this, but I’d actually recommend implementing your own ([here’s a good one on A*](https://www.redblobgames.com/pathfinding/a-star/introduction.html))
- Enemy spawning; danger close! Enemies should not spawn so close to the main character, it is nearly impossible to dodge them later on.
- The later waves lack finesse. Managed to get to wave 8 at which point there was just a ton of enemies of all types everywhere (spawning real close, those jerks!)
Having said all this, it is time for the most important piece of criticism ever: the theme does not match much at all! This is way too compatible! *(Just kidding, the theme itself is terrible so I don’t actually care.)*
Good job!
Overall: *4.0 (Good)*
Fun: *4.5 (Great)*
Innovation: *4.0 (Good)*
Theme: *2.0 (Bad)*
Graphics: *3.0 (Average)*
Audio: *3.0 (Average)*
Humor: *4.0 (Good)*
Mood: *3.5 (Above average)*