Overall a really good game , took me a little while to get the hang of what was going on but once I got it I really enjoyed playing it.Overall a solid submission the only bit of feedback I could give would probably to add some more 'depth' to game by maybe adding more cards and make the menu look a bit better.However both of those are extremely 'nit-pick' comments! Anyways good job, awesome game!

The rules were a bit complex, but about halfway through the first game I felt that I had learned enough strategy to make a decent go at it the second time around. I don't see many games that make use of regular playing cards, so that was cool to see.

Neat idea. The Nicolas Cage representing the humans made me giggle. Fun mechanics.

Glad to see a card game. It was fun once I got the hang of it.

Once I understood what to do, this game was very fun. I played it on hard mode, and wiped out the humans in 28 turns. I don't normally enjoy these kinds of games but I liked this one.

Good job!

Hey man cool game. Gets more fun the more time you put in. Really makes you think. I mean is Nicholas Cage a good actor. Exhibit A: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVCrmXW6-Pk
I just don't know. Can you help me out?

Very interesting concept, and it was fun to play the bad guy.

You need to work a little harder to sell the "card game to control the AI" concept, although I can imagine a card game AI growing out of control. Very appropriate name.

I was concerned about the game balance, but after playing on medium and difficult, it's actually pretty well balanced - skillful play will get a win.

:mortar_board:

I had this on stream. Again, great job dude! Really well designed card game!

Although this was a card game it felt tense and exciting, the music set the perfect mood for an man vs. machine battle. I like the mechanics, using cards to change the rules keeps it exciting.

This was a fun take on the theme and the music was great (although you didnt make it yourself) it fit right in!
Great backstory and nicely balanced.
Overall great entry, only thing I would change is custom cards.

The game had a steep learning curve but once I got it I had a lot of fun.

Perhaps add some ingame highlights of your possible actions for the first rounds to introduce the game concept.

Its a very interesting idea to use a deck of cards as the core mechanic! I enjoyed it and think the different difficulties are a great idea.

Played 3 games, one on which I didn't really know what was going on, the second on easy... just in case, and liked it. And then a 3th more challenging on Normal. I really enjoyed oversmarting them humans jeje. References are great, GlaDos and Smith are OP, great gameplay since you can literally adjust the difficulty to be as hard as you want. Go Bacon!

I'm glad to see a card game, haven't seen one on this game jam yet. Nice usage of existing real cards and assigning roles to each suit and value(I guess it got it's name). As you mentioned tooltips helped **a lot**. On normal I pretty fast found winning strategy, so good there are harder levels. Really hard to find the drawback for me, rng is like in every other card game, nothing I can complain at. Maybe use custom cards instead of the original ones? Great entry dude.

Game is fun, even if bit easy. Really nice idea, could be developed into actual TCG i think. +humor points for cage and reference in cards.

A very well made game! The cards were nice, the abilities easy to understand and learn, there was a custom game option which I really liked, and even a turn log recording all of the cards played!

On the curtom option you can set the number of humans to a very high number, making the game impossible. Maybe you could make it so the deck size is relative to the number of turns estimated, just to make it possible.

Other than that, I can't find anything wrong. This is a very good game, very well polished and very well made. Good job! :smile:

This game really lack some kind of tutorial or general rules. I had no idea what I have to do at first.

@ray Did you see the "How to play" button on the main menu? Or any of the tooltips?

We streamed your game with Danae plays on Twitch. :) Here's a link:

[Danae streams Ludum Dare 39: Day 1, part 1: AI; ace intelligence](https://youtu.be/4KfQtLDzK-g?t=2h52m51s)

This was an interesting idea. While the "How to play" screen certainly explained the rules, it is probably not very appropriate for such a complex set of rules – in this type of rules, a (skippable) "walk the player through the first couple of turns" type of tutorial is much more effective. The interface was simple and usable, maybe the indicators (turns left, swarm size, power, power usage) could have been more obvious on the screen. It was also not entirely obvious what the two cards in the top right were – I assume they were the last card played and the rest of the deck? It would be nice if you had custom graphics for most of the cards. I can imagine a stylised deck with e.g. power cards (mostly hearts suit if I recall?) with an obvious energy-like symbol on them, swarm cards with a symbol of a bot, etc. As it was, even if there was a correspondence between suits / numbers and functions, I could only tell what a card did by looking at the tooltip. While it is nice that the game is essentially playable with a regular deck of cards, its game presentation doesn't have to follow the same format. I would also be interested in how this could be modified to be a 2-player duel game. Good job! :)

Very interesting game! I included it in my Ludum Dare 39 compilation video series, if you’d like to take a look :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHHnWvZj4oQ