Clocks & Cards by TerraCottaFrog

made by TerraCottaFrog for Ludum Dare 51 (COMPO)

Play cards to upgrade your clock face in this deck building / engine building game!

You are the last in the line at the clock factory, tasked with decorating the faces of new grandfather clocks. For some reason, those decorations refill you supplies, just roll with it.

Instructions

Click cards in your hand to pick them up.

Some cards can be placed onto numbers to create inlays. When the minute hand passes an inlay, its activated.

Other cards are played immediately.

You have on resource: gears. There is a goal for each level of gears you need to obtain, and they are also used to play cards.

At the end of each level, you can pick one of five cards to add to your deck, then remove any card from your deck.

Running the Game

For windows, download the zip, extract it, and run the .exe file.

For debian / ubuntu / derivatives, download the deb file and install it with dpkg or by running it from a gui.

For any system, download the .love file. If you have Love2D installed, you can use it to run the game using that file.

Link	https://terracottafrog.itch.io/clocks-and-cards
Debian Package	https://terracottafrog.itch.io/clocks-and-cards
Link	https://terracottafrog.itch.io/clocks-and-cards
Link	https://github.com/adamtpowell/ClocksAndCards
Original URL	https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/51/clocks-cards

Ratings

Overall	129^th	3.684⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Fun	227^th	3.342⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Innovation	28^th	4.053⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Theme	32^th	4.211⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Graphics	298^th	3.289⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Audio	198^th	3.316⭐	21🧑‍⚖️
Humor	197^th	2.781⭐	18🧑‍⚖️
Mood	217^th	3.278⭐	20🧑‍⚖️
Given		20🗳️	17🗨️

Feedback

PlanetBluto

03. Oct 2022 · 02:36 UTC

Pretty nice concept. The game is really simple, which isn't a bad thing, I just wish the game was more easy to understand and less "dead space" between the 10 second intervals. Perhaps having the gimmick being you have to organize the clock within 10 seconds instead of multiple 10 second intervals would make it more stimulating. I also like the visuals sort of resembling some old windows 95 type application, very nice.

scottgoldsmith

03. Oct 2022 · 15:51 UTC

Interesting concept. Started to get the hang of it, and love the stacking and how many options are available in the game. Would've been interesting to have more occur between the cycles, as I spent a lot of time waiting.

Love seeing things made in Love2D, great job!

Chaseplays

03. Oct 2022 · 19:34 UTC

I agree with the other comments, it's fun and a cool concept and I like what you did with it, the only major problem I had is that (especially in the earlier rounds) there's a lot of dead time. Being able to skip to the next interval probably would have made the game feel a lot faster, but other than that great job!

ghostbomb

05. Oct 2022 · 05:35 UTC

Cool game. Winding Key is super busted lol. I think with the right build and infinite APM you could just go forever.

KITmani

05. Oct 2022 · 05:48 UTC

Somehow the dead_time mentioned in the comments above only got me motivated to play for more. Optimazed the setup so that it would scale fast and i could use the scrapper to repurpose cards form the clock and "move" them to where are the clock hand are at the moment. Such a cool concept with a cleat visualisation! Great work.

LDJam user 280036

05. Oct 2022 · 06:02 UTC

I like the engine building elements. Getting a bunch of gears all at once was very satisfying! I listened to Ghostbomb's advice about the Winding key and I agree that it's super busted.

I also made a clock-themed card game so it was cool to see a similar take :smile:

🎤 TerraCottaFrog

06. Oct 2022 · 00:20 UTC

@ghostbomb @googlypoo Winding key is definetly broken. Ran out of time to balance that stuff, if its even possible.

The hammer is actually even better I think than the winding key (6 activations instead of 4) : )

Brandon1037

10. Oct 2022 · 03:14 UTC

amazing game i like it

TwistedHawk

10. Oct 2022 · 22:59 UTC

I think it's a cool concept, but felt a little slow waiting for the intervals. If you can have a skip ahead function, or even speed it up a little from level to level, that would give the game an added challenge. Keep at it!

gagapete

11. Oct 2022 · 10:59 UTC

This was interesting. I agree with the other commenters that the waiting time is a bit to much but I really love that art style for some reason.

BayLock

12. Oct 2022 · 05:20 UTC

Amazing game. Really catchy graphics. Some work can be done from the gameplay side and can be a made a bit more complex. I think the 10 second rule did redistricted a lot of possibilities. You should try to remove the ten second rule and add a little more complex mechanic in the game, that is if you planning it to take further. Overall good job and all the best. Please do check out my submission as well.

🎤 TerraCottaFrog

12. Oct 2022 · 23:05 UTC

@baylock I definitely felt the theme restricting me with this. If I was a better designer (and I was a little faster coding) I could probably have made it work keeping the time intact. I was always grasping for another resource to add or something else to do while waiting, but everything I did unbalanced the game by making things snowball too much.

Thanks for the feedback!

F1Krazy

16. Oct 2022 · 13:22 UTC

I loved the concept of this! It took me a couple of rounds to fully get the hang of what I was doing, and it's also pretty slow in the early rounds when you don't have many cards. However, once you start improving your deck and getting more powerful cards like the one that draws three at once, the game really comes into its own.

You still have a lot of dead time at the start of each level, but as you get more and more cards and gears and things snowball, you find yourself with plenty to do in between each number. I was impressed with the number and variety of cards, and they all work well together to create an excellent game of strategy. I actually had to tear myself away from it just to write this review! Well done! I'd love to see you flesh this out into a larger game in the future.

tanis

19. Oct 2022 · 08:57 UTC

It's a solid idea. It took me a bit to start getting the hang of it. As others pointed out, it is a bit slow in the first rounds and it would have been nice to have an option to skip to the next interval.
Some background music would have also been nice.
Winding key is OP, definitely agree on that :smile:

José Bonilla

19. Oct 2022 · 12:44 UTC

Hi, this is a cool game, very original. I like the mechanics. I might have skipped something in the instructions completely but I felt you really couldn't lose? Sorry if I misunderstood. This made the play not as interesting as others have found (I mostly placed gears and cards inlays, did not find much use for the other cards). UI could be improved a bit. Great job though, balancing this kind of game and especially in 48 hours is challenging.

🎤 TerraCottaFrog

19. Oct 2022 · 14:49 UTC

@tanis that's funny, there should be background music! what platform were you on?

CataclysmicKnight

19. Oct 2022 · 16:00 UTC

It took me a bit to understand but once I did, I found a game that's really unique. I'm excited to see where you take this! Engine- and deck-builders are my fav games, and I love that this really started getting exciting around round 7 or 8. That was when I started reaching the limits of what a space could hold, so it became important to build in the right places vs just "throw everything I can afford on the next space that'll get triggered" like the rounds before.

Well done! And I really do mean it that I'm excited to see what happens in the future with this game :smile:

tanis

20. Oct 2022 · 06:22 UTC

> @tanis that’s funny, there should be background music! what platform were you on?

I am on macOS. I downloaded the .love package and run it with the latest love2d available on homebrew.

🎤 TerraCottaFrog

20. Oct 2022 · 17:17 UTC

@tanis Thanks, next time I gotta test these things properly... I think I only actually ran the .deb and the .exe...