Reap what they sow by ZLuca
An interactive card game where you can plant and harvest crops, burn cards from other players (npcs), steal cards and coins from each other and become the richest farmer in the world.
Problem
The game is not really playable on mobile, it crops out the right side of the screen so you can never end your first turn. Try it out on desktop (with the hovering cards it looks better anyways)
On your Turn
- You only have 3 actions per turn, you draw 1 card for free every round
- Click the Shop-Pile to buy a card for 2 coins
- Click the NPC profile pictures to learn more about them (they behave very different)
- Click any card on your hand and a target to play it on
- Shop-Pile to sell cards
- Crop-Pile to plant/harvest/water/burn/de-bug
- Coin-Pile to steal coins
- Card on opponent hand to burn card
- Click Next Turn to end your turn
The Cards
For readability and ease of play, here are some of the cards in game
Your Opponents:
You can learn more about them in-game, but here are the basics of their behavior. - Potatoheart: Likes farming and growing crops - Billy: Likes helping others, but hates attacking them - Lilly: Likes making money, no matter how she treats others - Jack: He just likes attacking others 😈 and hates helping
| Github | https://github.com/LucaZnZ/ReapWhatTheySow |
| Original URL | https://ldjam.com/events/ludum-dare/52/reap-what-they-sow |
Ratings
| Overall | 599th | 3.205⭐ | 46🧑⚖️ |
| Fun | 546th | 3.116⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Innovation | 117th | 3.786⭐ | 44🧑⚖️ |
| Theme | 352th | 3.791⭐ | 45🧑⚖️ |
| Humor | 406th | 2.892⭐ | 39🧑⚖️ |
| Mood | 697th | 2.895⭐ | 40🧑⚖️ |
| Given | 37🗳️ | 66🗨️ |
Cool game but RNG jesus wasn't on my side this time : D
Had fun playing, see yaa on the next one!
Some few things could be improved. 6 turns is not enough (when some cards need 3 turns to have some return on investment). I feel the turns could be quicker if the cards animations when played were faster. The distribution of cards could be improved too (not as many shovels as I wanted ! ;))
But considering the amount of time you had, I am impressed with how much work has been done : you've implemented 3 different opponent AIs and this is something.
Well done !
@yamzho as for the amount of turns its quite similar... i thought too many turns would make the game feel too long for people, i had it at 10 turns once and that was too much, but maybe because i played the game an awful lot for testing lol. Tying the winning condition to the amount of turns wasn't ideal, but i needed to do it somehow :joy:
Are you talking about all card animations or specifically the attacks? because those are heavily slowed down so the player can react, if they have a pitchfork on hand... but i guess it makes it seem a bit slow, when he doesn't :thinking:
Oh and there are actually 4 different opponents. Thanks for your feedback :thumbsup:
I have some quibbles with the rules and balance, but I understand it's a tall order to balance something like this in short order! Still, I'll list 'em along with the feedback, as this IS a feedback section.
* Others have mentioned there aren't enough shovels or turns to really see a strategy through, which I'll echo.
* I don't think it helps the game to have shovels work on anyone's plot. It's difficult to justify spending a card and an action on planting something that I'm less likely to harvest than anyone else (as I always have to wait a full cycle of other people's turns before I get a shot). Maybe a rarer card that can do it, but the (hopefully more common) shovel just works on your own?
* The recipes were really cool pay-off cards, but I wish I'd have been able to sell them for 1 coin, as they tended to gum up my hand with no way to get rid of irrelevant ones.
* I'd be interested to see how this plays with selling being a "free" action; it would help planting/harvesting feel more worth it, and also allow players to dig through the deck a bit more.
* I really liked seeing the implementation of "interrupts"; it seems to work well, though it took me off hand the first couple of times I was holding a pitchfork, trying to understand what I might be cancelling.
* It was cool to see many different flavors of bots (even with backstories!), though maybe a bit weird that some (just one?) of them straight up give away cards, hah.
* Exactly once I managed to pull off a big 10-coin recipe, and it was great. Cool way to handle a payoff card!
Nice work on this one, I enjoyed playing, and played a few extra rounds just for fun after getting a good feeling for it. =)
- The shovels should definitely increase, but it is also possible to use them wisely on your own crops, technically you can plant, water and harvest in one round, or at least water and harvest.
- Idk if you noticed, but you can also plant crops everywhere, not just in your own piles. It aint really useful, but hey. The only advantage of only harvesting your crops would be to not anger the other players, or give them a chance to defend.
- As for selling the recipes without doing them :thinking: idk, they are not really preventing your from anything, there is no limits to your cards on hand... maybe reducing the amount of recipes could help tho
- I thought to make selling cards just one action per turn (if you decide to sell cards), instead of an action per card. Making it completely free might make it too easy.
- Yeah the digging through the deck isn't really happening much right now, the amount of cards is not properly balanced with the amount of turns/rounds. I should do more math on that for future games :sweat_smile:
Glad you liked the game and thanks again for the feedback :v:
But thanks again, I'm actually impressed by myself with how good it already looks :sweat_smile:
The AI was pretty cool, I also liked the idea.
But for the act of selling, just select the card and click the shop. Mango sells quite good.
I tried to play the Windows download and couldn't progress because I couldn't see the Next Turn button, which was cut off - I'm on a pretty wide screen. I was able to play on WebGL though!
Thanks for letting me know about the windows issue, i think i forgot to allow rescaling the window or smth, i'll fix it later ✌️
I wish there was just a chilling music hahaha but I really enjoyed it!
Some thoughts:
- My favorite part of the game was planting asparagus/potatoes and watching the piles get huge. I really like how you randomly rotate cards in piles, and how the coins scatter absolutely everywhere! It makes it feel like a real-life messy tabletop game.
- I thought I would win about half the time, but I ended up winning only about 1/6 of the time. Maybe the NPCs should start with less cards in hand.
- The coins didn't really feel like they played a major role in the game until the ending tally. Some options to offset that would be:
- Get rid of them altogether and have the end score be based off a tally of each player's cards on the field and in the hand
- Make some cards cost coins to play.
- Other people want the shovel to be more common and for it to only effect your own field, but I think it's fine the way it is. I'd instead like to see recipes be able to use crops from your field. I was never able to use recipes though, so maybe I just don't know how they work.
- You could add some more strategic decisions to the game by reworking the shop. Split the shop into three separate piles and keep the top card on each pile revealed, for instance. Too often did I receive recipes for crops I didn't have.
- I might be biased about the recipes since I never got to play one, but reworking them a bit could make some interesting results. I propose the recipes be removed from the shop pile and instead there be three recipe zones that are available to everyone: when a player uses a recipe, they get the coins as normal and a new recipe is drawn in that zone.
- I really liked the different NPC profiles/playstyles. It made it feel a little more like I was playing with real people!
- It felt bad when I had to pass a turn and get rid of extra actions I could have taken. Perhaps drawing a card should be free to offset that (and then also remove the free card draw at the beginning of the turn). I was thinking that gaining a coin could also be an action, but that would probably just make players gain 3 coins every turn and pass.
All in all I'm really glad to see this take on the theme, card games are rare in Ludum Dare but they're always soooo good! Nice work!
I really enjoyed the mechanic. The interface could use more work if you make it a full game but for a jam game it's fantastic and feels pretty good. Some of the actions weren't very intuitive (e.g. how to sell cards - had to read the instructions). For some of the cards I'm still not sure what they do (e.g., why couldn't I sell the fruit salad?). In any case, I had a lot of fun playing and even managed to win at the end! :smile:
@celtican Thank you, that real live messiness was exactly what i was going for :muscle:
- I wanted to make it symmetrical, like a real card game with human players. I think the main reason they feel so weird, is because they all have different goals, potatoheart and billy really struggle with winning, because they're too nice :joy:
- Hmm, well on the one side the coins are a way to portray your score, and on the other you can buy new cards with them... but i already have one more use in mind I'm gonna implement.
- The recipes being able to use cards from your field would be an interesting approach :thinking: tho, when i want to use them, i just steal my ingredients together from other players lol
- Having the shop revealed so you know what you're spending your money on is actually a good idea! I was thinking of adding a discard pile for sold crops from which you can buy, but having it being it open like that would reduce input randomness and increase strategy! Great idea
- Yeah no, the recipes gonna stay cards :joy: together with the multiple piles they might be easier to pull of tho
- The free card draw at the start of the turn is exactly so you don't get stuck doing nothing. Before that i had multiple instances where i didn't have coins and no useful card. Now it at least allows to get out of there.
Thank you a lot for your feedback :thumbsup:
@matank Yeah well, the mechanics themselves i came up with in like 20min, but making it digital is a whole other deal :joy: It took only slightly longer than anticipated, i didn't have time adding voiced dialogue lines as i planned, but apart from that it worked out great.
- The fruit salad and other recipes require you to have all the ingredients listed on hand... I wasn't very descriptive in its description, my bad :sweat_smile:
* There is little point in planting your own crops instead of selling if fields are collectivized
* But I've never seen the AI steal crops
* Victory largely depends on RNG/shovel drops
* Real-time interrupts in an otherwise turn-based card game don't feel good and force me to keep my hand on the mouse
* For a rare card, mango is just a bad crop (5:3 RoI instead of 2:1, and plays badly with a fixed limit of 6 turns), though it doesn't matter if you just sell everything outright
* The altruism mechanics can actually be a gateway to toxicity
* I agree recipes shouldn't be cards because there is way too much RNG at play currently
I liked the growing mechanics and bashing other players. It kinda felt like a real card game. In the end I utterly lost, I was not sure what was the lose condition. It felt that the game just abruptly ended.
The game was maybe a bit too quiet, some music could have made some kind of mood, now the feeling was playing against invisible guys with cards in ghastly silence that was only broken by some card and money sounds.
Interesting idea, but I am not sure where to put the gameplay feel. Here is why:
* It's not really a strategy game, because you don't make choices in the shop, or not sure what the AI players will do.
* It's not an engine building game, as the card bought from the shop don't really improve your current deck/action setup.
* It's not a bidding game, as the prices are constant and you are not bidding for cards/action.
* Not a diplomacy game either, as you don't really have any interaction options for other AI players directly.
* Not a worker placement game either, as you don't compete for actions with others players.
* Maybe I could put it a bit into action-optimization games basket, but somewhat hard to do it too. As the choice set is rather limited, and earlier or later your turn consists only of selling crops.
What I am saying, is I would like to see some more clear direction with gameplay. Some mechanical problems, in my humble opinion:
1. Card, that lets you steal 2 coins is kinda useless, as you pay 2 coins to get it and an action, then an action to use it. So basically it wastes two of your actions in 3 action turn. It might not be a problem, if you want to overtake somebody, but that's two actions. I would rather currently just sell 2 bananas and get 4 coins - that's worth about 3.2 coins more (because you need actions to seed and harvest).
2. Selling costing actions is causing problems. Noted above. As well as making my strategy to just grow most valued crops, so I will be able to sell them in time. It might not be such a big problem, if there was a sell action and I could sell all crops of the same type, or even choose what I want to sell. Then again, this is nearing worker placement mechanics.
3. Shop is blind spot now. I would expect to get at least somewhat more valuable cards, as I am spending action and money to buy. You also don't know that you will get. I am not saying to drop the randomness entirely, but at least some indication of possible options would be good before buying, so I can weight my decision before committing to the action.
4. Helping other is a nice idea, but it would be cool if the action also did something to the player who is helping. For example, if Mr. potatohead is watering my plant, he could get a coin? or some _friend token_ he could spend somewhere else.
5. I really like, how each AI has it's own personality. So another idea, maybe, would make this a kind of cooperation game instead of competition. So you the goal is grow collectively the best garden, but each AI has it's own preferences what/where they grow and act. And the main task for the player would be to influence the garden so it becomes the best garden. I understand this might be far off from your idea, but at this point I am just brainstorming :sweat_smile:
Oh, and floating cards as actions from other players - great that you have at least some indication what is happening, but for me it was not always clear what just happened. Why did that card got cancelled? Did I just lost a card? How did they do it, I want to do it too.
All in all I like what you did, it's not easy. :thumbsup: I hope you don't find this discouraging, just wanted to point out most pain points for me, how you could avoid them in your next game :slight_smile:
First of, I agree with everything you said.
- If you do the maths for the crow, it does look bad :sweat_smile:
- Yeah initially i planned of making selling cost just 1 action per turn for any cards sold, i didn't get around implementing that tho.
- I thought the flying cards would already help with understanding what's going on, but you're right, without knowing what all the cards do, you don't know what exactly is happening. :thinking:
- Helping others does make you look more friendly in their eyes. Its like low key diplomatic. If you help someone they're more likely to help you back (most of them at least) same for attacking. But maybe encouraging helping could be worth it :thinking:
- hmm I do like cooperative games as well, but most of the ones i played were about escaping or saving something. Making a fabulous garden sounds like a weird goal :joy: and a completely different game, not necessarily bad tho.
Thanks again, really appreciate the feedback and getting the game feel right is definitely something I'll focus more on for the next game. Even tho it might be just as challenging as balancing in the time window :sweat_smile: :v: