The Curse of Cattenburg by Honest Dan
Update: There are some known bugs, feel free to check the known bugs section at the bottom of this page. The post jam version has likely addressed all/most of them!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v07-yQ7UdwA
The Curse of Cattenburg
How to Play
Roll the dice to traverse the board using the "Roll" button. Use the mouse to interact with the interface. The card game layout can be explained with the below images:
Your characters stats explained:
Back Story
In the kingdom of Cattenburg there were a group of adventurers who wanted nothing more than to go on adventure, but... ever since the curse was placed on Cattenburg, none of its inhabitants were able to leave. Whichever road they take, they wind up back in Cattenburg.
Rumour has it there are three parts of an ancient Relic which could, perhaps, be pivotal in breaking the curse.
Gameplay
There are two elements to the game: a board game and a card combat game.
The Looping Board Game
The game play loop is managed through a looping board game mechanic, that represents The Curse of Cattenburg that stops its adventurers from seeking adventure in other lands. Landing on the various tiles in the board game, you can:
- Visit Cattenburg... again and again... recruiting new adventurers to your party.
- Fight deadly rats, followers of the monstrous rat known as Mobius
- Meet inhabitants of the nearby area who will help train your party to be stronger
- Find parts of the ancient relic, in hope of uncovering the mystery of the curse.
The Card Combat Game
Combat will be resolved through an original card combat game that pits two parties against one another. Characters can only attack by utilising the cards laid out in the centre of the board, but those cards are face down. A party must spend Actions Points to reveal these cards, and also to place a party member on the card in order to use that card. The cards range from attacking cards, defensive cards and special cards. At the end of the turn, any revealed cards are flipped back over, and the board slides down. Memorising card placement will help you, though a fresh row of cards being added to the centre of the board each turn keeps your options open.
A brief overview of the game mechanics can be found in the clip from during development, though it doesn't cover everything: https://www.twitch.tv/videos/761848121
Meet the team
Art
The artist for the team was spacey3d, a friend of ours who is a talented 3D modeller. This project allowed her to focus solely on 2D assets, and we are blown away by the quality and personality instilled in her illustrations. The elegant card design, loveable characters and overall polish has added so much to our game.
Audio
Our music was created during the jam by Barlas, a good friend of the main developer Brainoid. The mood it sets, along with its overall quality, add a lot to the game. Sound FX were recorded by resident Mouth-Magician Honest Dan, who enjoyed meowing and hissing into the microphone during stream.
Programming & Design
Brainoid and HonestDan have worked together on many gamejams over the past three years. Originally working in Unity, Honest Dan moved to Unreal in early 2019 as he got a job using the engine. Brainoid was kind enough to start learning Unreal Engine this year too so that they were able to continue working together in game jams.
Appendix
Here is a listing of all the cards
Known bugs (in Jam version)
- Try not to be too "mouse / click" heavy on the cards. Playing around with the "float on hover" effects too much can occasionally cause some animation bugs.
- The mages special ability stuns her and the enemies. The mage is placed back at her character slot, allowing another character to use the special ability card - this is a bug.
- Hovering over cards as your game ends / starts can cause some display issues, but these should resolve their selves as the game progresses.
- Game often crashes when you click "Attack" on a popup.
- If you lose to a boss, it still shows you a win screen ( Maybe it's better this way :P since most people don't go for a replay and quickly want to try other games )
- The game can crash when you press "Attack" on the attack event occasionally. We are investigating this.
| Youtube | https://honestdan.itch.io/the-curse-of-cattenburg |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/47/the-curse-of-cattenburg |
Ratings
| Overall | 12th | 4.399⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 91th | 4.076⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 54th | 4.203⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 365th | 3.994⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Graphics | 3th | 4.829⭐ | 81🧑⚖️ |
| Audio | 21th | 4.447⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 183th | 3.753⭐ | 77🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 70th | 4.263⭐ | 80🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 111🗳️ | 68🗨️ |
@happygamer500 and @federico-giorgi I'd love if you can revisit tomorrow night when hopefully we have been able to fix the build. We'd love even more for you to then re-rate the game once you've played. I'm not sure what you can rate if the game is crashing on launch :(
I thought my game was pretty good but this, wow :)
The only thing that I could say that is even remotely negative is that it felt too short and especially too easy... I completed it first time and because of this I felt like I completed it before I even completely got to know all the mechanics and that just feels like a shame, maybe I was just lucky that I got the boss fight so early? Idk..
but overall an amazing game, I just wanted a little more challenge so I really had to learn some tactics :smiley:
@crazi456 @teshimoto @federico-giorgi @happygamer500 the game should be working now. Please report if it crashes again!
Animations were smooth, music fit really well and I adore the artstyle.
I could't use warrior special for some reason, but other character special worked properly.
I was most likely lucky as well since I arrived to the boss just in the second loop, but it was a pretty hard battle when he one-shotted my bard on the first turn :D
Great game!
The gameplay was a bit repetitive/simple though, and some animations seemed to play slowly which meant a lot of time waiting. I found the warrior's attack and mage's action points to be pretty effective. Most of the time I am just using reveals to find attacks and specials (using the warriors special)
I also found that there was no reward for beating enemies, so I ran from every fight, but it still took a while to collect the relics. I did manage to win! and I suppose my thief was close to dying, but mage and warrior were healthy.
**Regarding the difficulty / balancing** - We made the decision to set the difficulty low. This is something Brainoid and I both would prefer not to do with our games, but for the sake of the jam where people are often giving a game 5-10 minutes, we felt that giving the majority of players a chance to experience the game from start to finish was the right call. If you want to experience the game at a harder difficulty, the enemies you face get more difficult based on the rolls. I believe if you get somewhere above 30 rolls you should start coming across the most difficult packs. The "win" condition of the game is heavily RNG influenced too, which impacts the difficulty of the game - which isn't ideal. We have talked about scaling the probability of mobius tiles based on how many rolls you've had, but again - it extends the time it takes to play through the game.
We wanted levelling up to be related to combat, but unfortunately - it was outside of the scope of the jam so we had to stick with the basic implementation of a board tile rewarding you with a stat upgrade.
Obviously the art was fantastic, and I really enjoyed all the music & dialogue too!
My only minor confusion was the action points I was able to use as the amount changed a few times and it wasn't clear to me why it changed, but it did add an interesting extra challenge when I was more constrained.
But overall this was a fantastic entry, great work to the team!
Thats a shame about the first fight! The mage is indeed a glass cannon, and if the rats go first and both attack your mage and get a crit... then yes - poor mage will die! The balance is a little tricky, something we'd like to address in the future. For the jam, we were focused on getting it as "quick" and "playable" as we could, meaning low hp pools and ability to skip fights so you can try and complete the game without taking half hour!
@gamesplusjames thanks for the feedback! I'm glad you lifted the Curse of Cattenburg!!! We would have loved to have made a tutorial.. but yeah... TIME! So Action Points == The highest wisdom stat in your party. So if your mage who has 5 wisdom died, it would then use your warriors wisdom of 3 at the start of next turn. It is what makes classes like the bard valuable - they give you more information on the board / actions, despite only doing 2 damage.
Shame the combat felt that way for you @bakemonomori - if you want to be more specific - we're looking for feedback to try and improve the card game element further!
I love the art style, and the feedback is good. Great job 👏
I just played a game, my encounters were 1 set of rats, then 3 relic bits, and the boss quickly destroyed me. However, upon my death it said "Mobius was defeated", so, yay? =) Maybe that's a bug.
Tried another game, and got into a fight with the boss again, my one remaining character had 8 or more hp, Mobius had 12, he activated the Special card, and then it went to the "you win" screen again (not sure if mobius somehow did more than the expected 6 damage and this was a wrong win screen, or if his special actually kills himself, explaining the previous playthrough as well..)
Fun, though, while it lasted!
I did find the overworld game very unsatisfying - battles were just a drain on hp, and I only made it around the loop once in my two playthroughs. If battles gave some risk/reward choices (or just some loot/stat bonus for winning) I think that'd help a lot. Definitely being forced into the boss fight early isn't fun, I like the idea of being able to summon him when you're next at town. Enjoyed playing the card game part a bit, though often felt I didn't have much of a choice to make.
I did a playthrough on Twitch! https://www.twitch.tv/videos/763967602 (unfortunately didn't get to listen to game sound, as I was running through Proton and it didn't seem to like something)
Lovely graphics too! This is unreal engine, or just using some kind of source code?
The revealing and selecting mechanic was original to us too, we are currently going to explore if it has enough depth to make it worth expanding further :) Thanks for playing!
But I would definitely prioritise Linux and macOS builds first, since in Unreal those should be possible to make with quite little effort I think, and the game is already coded for desktops.
First off, probably the highlight of the game for me was reaching Go and being able to get another party member. It completed the entire looping experience and gave me a goal to continually try to reach. I REALLY like the entire board game meta. In a world full of short experiences pieced together by a Slay the Spire-like overworld, I'm glad you tried something different here.
As for the card game itself, my first impression from reading the directions and looking at the screenshot was that it reminded me of Karuta. I'm glad the memorization wasn't THAT taxing though. The memory aspect is a crazy twist to the genre with a lot of potential. I don't think it came into a play as much as it could have. As in, if the cards didn't flip back down after a reveal, it wouldn't have made too much difference for me as there weren't a ton of things to memorize. Perhaps some variants where you could play risk/reward and reveal a bunch of cards, at the cost of taxing the player's irl memory.
The waterfall movement of the cards was another unique mechanic you brought in. I indeed liked the strategy of choosing whether or not to give away the card reveal or not. It was reminiscent of Slay the Spire to me where I would carefully map out a combo to make sure I didn't take any unnecessary hits.
One of the things that impressed me the most was that you were able to mimic the card movement that you see in Hearthstone, I'm very surprised at that. I feel like that's take me a bit too long to implement to get it to feel right, but you got all the right hoverspeeds and angles correct!
Overall I'm a big fan of innovation in games and I'm really happy to see such a bold entry into the card game world. There's a lot going on but it all seems to work together somehow. Looking forward to seeing how you add more things to the game since like some said, it can feel straightforward at times with lighter decisionmaking.
I was bit upset that Mobius' special ability one-shot my mage, but I didn't realize crit was applicable to specials as well. Made him even more dangerous, for sure. Speaking of, perhaps the crit should be more clearly indicated. I feel it could go unnoticed unless you're fully focused.
The production values are absolutely amazing for a LD game, so well done on that regard. The art is gorgeous and the gameplay is smooth. I'm really looking forward to where you're going to take this one.
Gameplay:
I feel like there is some potential there, although I'm not sure I like the memorization + RNG combo all that much. I would focus on finding a way to make decisions matter more. Generally there are many options + variables, some of which I care for less than others. I would say find maybe look for some inspiration in other modern board games and see how they solve these issues.
UI/UX:
- I wish the cursor and the card were aligned, it is difficult to use cards on the ones I want.
- The battles would go a little quicker, but on the other hand I keep missing on important information like what my enemies were doing.
- It took me way too much to understand that the ability that covers a card also returns an AP.
- I keep forgetting what the max HP of my characters are, maybe this should be added.
- I think the hierarchy of character stats isn't represented correctly right now. The most important information is the attack value and the HP. I'm not entirely sure how dodge + wisdom(?) actually work, and so I wasn't really paying attention to those.
- Sometimes I managed to hit more than one character with an attack card, not sure if it was a bug or the reason was not communicated well enough.
Graphics:
- The motion blur is off the charts on this one, I think it could have been much lighter.
Bugs:
- I could keep rolling the die even after entering a battle.
- At some point one of my character cards started hovering and effectively covering the other cards. I think the character died while I was hovering on it and the animation didn't stop. It got stuck in that state for the rest of the game unfortunately.
I wrote all of this because I see some potential here,
Good luck!
You did a pretty good job for the audio, it suits the gameplay really well. Visually speaking it is stunning. And you created so many things in such short notice.
I don't think that it is a good idea to be able to dodge / escape fights. The best aspect of your game is the fighting, you should encourage the players to fight. If you think about your goal in the game then you don't really want to fight if you have a choice.
I would suggest to make the fight mandatory and change the type of the tile once you character leaves it.
I did not quite understood what the different stats meant for the characters: WISDOM and LUCK. It does not seem to have any impact.
There are some bugs here and there and you could add some visual / audio feedbacks (when you don't have any action point for instance), but hey ! It is an awesome entry !
- We agree about escaping. Initially there should have been a reward for fighting, but time meant our design had to work around that. Secondly, we wanted players (LD players, this is - who give a game 5-10 mins usually) to experience the whole game so decided that skipping battle could help people rush for the end boss fight. Ideally, it wouldn't be like that - if this were not a jam game!
- The tile all change when you get back to town, but the tile changing when landing on it is a decent idea we will think about
- Stats would have been explained if we had time for a tutorial... welp. Wisdom = the highest wisdom stat in your party will be used to determine how many actions points you have per turn. Luck = Adds to dodge and crit chance.
Thanks again, really appreciate it!
The audio was good, and set the right mood, and the although there were a few bugs with dragging cards around, there was nothing game breaking. Just a bit more practical game design, and investment in the results of the interactions would go a long way. This is a pretty promising entry, I believe you'll do well in the competition and I look forward to seeing a more polished card game here. Thank you for the game.
But the performance on my laptop (didn't try on my main PC) was sadly very bad. And I mean it runs worse than "Deus Ex: Mankind Divided" does on my laptop :laughing: Often I felt like in a slide show. Luckily, I am a patient person, so I was patiently waiting :smile:
I didn't like the Monopoly-like mechanic of roll a die and move where it says. It's a mechanic I always disliked, as it gives the player exactly zero agency and hence it feels more like the game is playing me than I am playing the game. This feeling of no agency is sadly compounded by some other game design choices:
- It feels like there is no incentive to fight at all (at least I saw no rewards pop up; but maybe that was just my luck?);
- Other events, except for finding relics of course, also seem to yield little to no effects; hence making me feel like nothing really happened;
- Sometimes the game gives too little feedback, I think. For example, I met a wizard, was allowed to choose a character that would interact with him, and told that the success will depend on Luck. Great. So I send in my wizard in. Game focuses on my wizard card, highlights his Luck attribute and.... nothing. I get no message of success or failure, no message of reward or punishment. Just nothing happened. Making me again feel like I am doing nothing yet again.
On the other hand, the fighting card game has some very nice ideas and it can be quite fun! I enjoyed the memory element of it and potential strategic use of cards you revealed earlier. I'm not sure about those very target-specific cards (attack/defend P1, E2 and so on) - as with a little bit of ill luck in revealing you can end up with a turn that does exactly nothing. But that's a nitpick really. The card game really does have a solid base gameplay. Good job here!
I experienced some strange behavior in the card game, that I thought you may want to hear about. Might have been bugs, but might have just been a result awful performance. I had problems placing my wizard on cards (he wasn't stunned or anything) - he just often refused to "stick" and just went back to his starting position. I also sometimes revealed cards that refused to be intractable at all (didn't highlight), which - funnily enough - I managed to fix each time by just alt-tabbing out and back into the game.
I wrote an essay, I see :laughing: But hopefully you will get some useful feedback out of it! I think you did some titanic and really impressive job here.
EDIT: Yes! The "graphics settings" version allows for running the game smoothly even on a potato. Very nice :smile:
You'll be pleased to hear we agree with you about it! The lack of incentive to fight, was not the design but more the limitation of time. The monopoly board mechanic was more to satisfy the gamejam and didn't particularly give us an ideal way to "traverse options" for your party. There was a lack of feedback on winning fights, completing events, and more - which we would certainly put time into if we were to develop this further. The E/P 1/2/3 cards we are trying to redesign and are open to suggestion. We want them to be specific such that it can feed into the potential strategy of attack order and educated gambles etc. However, we think its too unclear. Our current next iteration would be to change them to separate cards: attack 1/2/3 and defend 1/2/3 that can be used the same way by both teams. In addition to this, if there is no E or P 3 remaining, we remove any attack/defend 3 cards from the deck. Thanks again for your experiences, means a lot!
If you’d like to rewatch the playthrough, you can find it here:
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/767505473?t=5h00m08s
Good luck on your ratings! :D
💜 Elysia Griffin AKA Button Feedback Lady
https://www.twitch.tv/elysiagriffin"
But, and this is a big but for me, those mechanics are communicated really really poorly. I tried to jump into it and just figure it out as I go. I got my butt handed to me. I restarted and read the info on this page. Still couldn't do anything in fights. It took me yet another restart to realize that you spend your action points both on revealing slot cards and dropping your characters on them.
Obviously, it's a jam, will be polished in future, blah blah blah, but I still think that kind of UX stuff is really important and, especially in a game as heavy with mechanics as this, you should use any trick up your sleeve to communicate those mechanics.
I managed to get around the map a few times before I died after I got the hang of it.
I had a bug in one run where my (dead) second stayed enlarged as if selected.
Oh, the last run I ended up with only the tank alive, only 2 action points, rarely got the chance to attack, while the enemy had 5 and 3 cards left. No way I could've won that one.
@hadi-danial Ah yeah bit difficult with just tank left, fair point. It almost feels like we need to find a way to gamble in that sort of situation.. Like sacrifice half your health for 1 AP or something.
Even if it all felt too luck based (I lost my 2 runs...), I loved it, the board game concept, how polished it was, the animations, the art, the audio, the lore with cats and rats, and the combat system is so cool and innovative! You guys know how to make games that's for sure, you have my congratulations!
Parts I had difficulties include not knowing what all the possible cards were on the board. This made it hard for me to judge whether it was a good idea to use support cards or not. The P and E cards were not obvious to me how defense or attack targets work; this could potentially be because I was running the game on its lowest setting, and made the card descriptions nigh unreadable.
Additionally, I thought the board game part was the weakest mechanic in the game. It felt incredibly random, and gave little control to the player. This is in stark contrast to the battle, where there are a lot of careful decisions one could make, with their own risks involved. It would be nice to see either branching paths, or a power-up like system to adjust how many spaces the player can move.
https://youtu.be/6mjxeFKXq_8?t=3080
Super glad I finally got to sink my teeth into this one! Don't think I have too much to say other than what we already covered in the VOD, but I'm super looking forward to your guys' improvements! I think taking out the random chance of the board game is an excellent idea, and I would love to see how that impacts the design of the rest of your features!
Brainoid, Spacey and I are looking at taking the card game concept further as its own project. I'll post details soon if anyone's interested in following the games progress.