This is the original PICO-8 edition!
The PC version adds more bosses, cards, updated graphics - while still keeping the gameplay-feel of this preview.
Introduction
In Cards with Personalities Classic, players take on the role of a humble hero trying to assemble a team of great personalities to defeat the weird bosses that roam the lands. Each turn, you will play cards from your hand to gain Gold, Attack or other effects (like converting monsters to your side). You can spend Gold to acquire new cards from your deck. Attack is used to slay monsters, which earns you Gold and other cool effects. The battlefield is always changing so you have to adapt and come up with new strategies to defeat all eight bosses!
Classic update 1.6
- Update the info view to indicate that it exist a new version! -> Please check it out!
- Update the title to reflect the title change
- Made main menu a bit less cluttered
- Improve readability in the info view and the how to play section
Feedback update 1.5
- Add confirmation on forfeit
- Add complete rule book
- Fix wonky sinus on startscreen
- Make startscreen easier to control
- Some monsters give more loot
- Change one background
- Change black to dark blue
Minor update 1.4
- Defensive wanderer buff, 1 block more
- (Potential fix) Sometimes missing hand bug after a restart of a match
Balance update 1.3
- Proud skeleton buff, 1 block more
- Deaths wife, cost 1 less + 1 coin
- Sparky boss fix faulty name
- Dj boney fix wrong name
- Strawberry giant, sprite change and rework stats
- The wall, sprite change and rework stats
- Gloomy Leo hp buff
- Gassy bat hp buff
- Number 2, hp nerf
- Gassy bat sprite rework
- Senile enchantress, cost one less
- Number 2 should reset block first to zero after attack
- Removing block effect should work as intended
- Icons in settings
- More space for description
Unlock update 1.2
- Bosses unlocks not by leveling up but instead unlock as you win the bosses
- Only use xp for backgrounds
- Updated the game over screen to reflect these changes, more info
- Fix bug on auto target not visualize properly
Quality of life update 1.1
- Change order so that you earn bosses first
- More xp on killed boss
- Better lock icon on bosses + general
- Always draw new cards on new turn
- Tease on more unlocks on game over screen
- Option to auto attack on turn end, move cursor and show it
- Improve the logic behind showing the confirmation box + better text
- Small boss attack animation
- Skip confirmation box if nothing else to do on turn
- Option to autopick next card
- New sounds
- Updated graveyard look
Controls
Move cursor
Keyboard: Arrow keys | Controller: D-pad or Joystick
Action button
Keyboard: Z | Controller: A / Y
Secondary button
Keyboard: X | Controller: B / X
(All actions that you can take are indicated at the bottom screen)
Rules
Every turn starts by you drawing five cards from your deck. Your deck always starts with the same ten cards, seven mediocre bards and the three common guards. In order to win you will need to buy and defeat cards in the middle lane to build a better deck. To do that, first draw from your deck by pressing the action button, then select which card you want to play and again presss the action button. After that, select the monster or minion you want to slay / buy. If you want read more about the cards, press the secondary button on them at any time.
Cards
There are three types of cards:
Minions
Cost Gold to buy and are indicated by the color of light blue (or brown for common cards). When bought, they are put in the graveyard and will be shuffled in the deck when there are no cards left to draw from your deck. The effects of the minions are activated when they are played.
Monsters
Cost Attack to slay and are indicated by the color of dark purple. Monsters in the lane attack every turn for one damage so keep that in mind. The effects are played out when slaying them. After doing its effects the monster is removed from play.
Bosses
Each boss has different effects. They will only attack when their criteria are met. The criteria are always depending how many turns a player have taken. When the number of turns corresponds to the criteria, the boss will attack and the turns will reset to zero. Bosses will also boost up their attack, they also follow a similar pattern to the criteria. Every turn end the boss will add one point to the boost, when all the dots are filled up the boss attack will increase and the dots wil reset to zero.
One really important thing to keep in mind is to remember to attack the boss, this will attack the boss with your remaining Attack so if you plan to slay monsters do that first. An option exist in the pause menu to auto attack on turn end.
End turn
If you have no cards left to play and you have done everything you planned this turn, press the action button on your deck and the turn will end. Three things will always be checked. First all your resources will reset (excluding block that will reset last). Then if monsters exist in the lane they will attack. And lastly if the criteria of the boss are met, it too will attack. Then five new cards can be drawn again and a new turn starts.
Game end
Each game will have you trying to reduce the current boss health to zero. If you manage that you will be rewarded with lots of XP to unlock more bosses and backgrounds. If the boss manages to reduce your health to zero the game ends as well, only rewarding you XP for how much health you managed to reduce from the boss.
Credits
Design, programing and art
Sebastian Lind
Twitter: Follow me
Music and SFX
José Ramón "Bibiki" García (check him out, he is awesome!)
Twitter: @BibikiGL
Website: http://bibikigarcia.com
Main tester
Simon Lind (My always helpful brother <3)
Twitter: @YTFFTW
Thanks @sparr for finding tokens for an update and thanks @pjft for awesome feedback!
Have fun and good luck! Do not hesitate to leave a comment about anything!
/ Sebastian Lind
Hi! Thanks for finally releasing this - great fun :) I defeated the Earl Dracula once so far - nice game you put together!
Some feedback and questions:
- The "you have resources left to use message" is somewhat weird at times, and unclear what to do with it. It triggers when I still have one coin at times but no available cards to purchase - is that why it's being triggered? If so, could it be skipped? Another occasion that left me stumped was a time when I played the double-agent witch card last and there were no enemies in line. I had zero coins and attack left, but I still got that message - nothing on the graveyard either. What did I miss?
- I can't seem to select any enemy other than the Earl Dracula for now - I take it I need to fulfil some criteria before they are available?
- From a quality of life perspective, a few remarks for consideration:
--- If I'm ending a turn and indeed I have nothing left possible to do, perhaps not prompt me to confirm?
--- If there's no reason that I'm missing so far, why not start the new turn by drawing the first set of cards automatically? I'm not saying the full 5, but the ones you have in the deck at least? Maybe I'm missing something later in the game, so feel free to dismiss these.
--- Any chance you'd add a shortcut to "play all"? Maybe pressing Z+X at once? It's a common shortcut that could help.
--- Why not default, when ending the turn, to spend the remaining attack on the boss? Once again, unless there will be strategic reasons not to do so, it could make it simple. When I think of similar games, Shards of Infinity, at least, does that.
Other than that, well done once again! Thanks and congrats on releasing it :)
@pjft Thanks! And massive thanks for valuable feedback :)
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It is a stupid implementation becouse of token limitations. I only check if you have any resources left, not if you can use it. I have been on and off if I should just remove it completely, but it helps sometimes.
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You are the second person that ask me that so I guess I have to do something about it. You need to level up in order to unlock bosses, and for that you only need to play. But I hear that maybe I should just show the next boss if you win bosses alternative give more xp :)
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Hmm yes maybe that is better, we will see if I have the tokens for it!
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I have tested it and I like it. the problem is that then it is hard to understand to know when you actually have earned more draws and how to draw new cards. Also too much automation and you do not understand what is happening. It would be great as an option, maybe I add it as a feature :)
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Hmm but then you will have a lot of times where you have cards that you do not want to play, destroy cards for example.
- Yes, I had a TODO in the code for a long time adding that. The but I kinda like actually attacking myself. But that would also be great as an option in the game!
@Elastiskalinjen Thanks for the prompt replies! Follow up replies on my end :) Please, just take them as remarks from someone who is interested both in game development, and also card games in a digital format. Ultimately, it's only food for thought!
- I agree that the reminder helps, and for lack of option I'd rather keep it instead of removing it. My comment was really that a) it wasn't always clear what was causing the warning and b) if there was nothing more I could do in the context of the game at the time, it could probably be skipped.
- I have no problem about that requirement to progress - it just wasn't clear why that wasn't possible as the bosses are all visible from the get go, whereas the backgrounds are hidden so it's clear that you can't get to them from the outset. Just that - a pattern that I usually see is having the bosses hidden and, at the end of a game in the score screen, display (XXX experience left to unlock Next Boss) or something similar. EDIT: Actually, I just noticed that there's a padlock icon on top of the boss, but it isn't really clear - though now that I see it, I can't unsee it. :) I wouldn't object to just showing a padlock.
- Yeah, this was my point in #1. Sorry for the repetition.
- I am fine with either, just calling out that any extra step that users are forced to take is one extra step between them and the fun the game provides. I suppose that my point is that: if after ending the turn (and this is an "IF", as maybe later bosses change the mechanics) the player will always discard any remaining cards in their hands and after the enemy's turn the player will always be forced to draw, then just avoid asking the user to press the button again. Why not just call it "End turn and draw from deck" and automate that first draw? I understand you may not want to automatically draw the entire hand (you may want to buy something with the ones you have, and then hope to shuffle that into the remaining cards you'll draw), but I am not sure what the user would be missing out on. I agree that it's perhaps too subtle when the user has earned more draws and has to draw cards - maybe actually change the background color of the deck (green?) instead of the thin outline it currently gets when there are new draws available?
EDIT 2: indeed, changing the color of the outline alone is somewhat subtle for the different actions - destroy, draw, etc. Maybe I'll become more aware of those, but a "simple" option (well, not so simple) could be to change color in something more striking - the deck color for when there are draws available, the background color perhaps when you're in "destroy" mode. Or maybe just the footer/bottom bar to different colors? - Fair point. Star Realms has an elegant system where it only automatically plays the cards that have no such effects, nor have any dependency. Maybe it's too complicated, so feel free to ignore, but I imagine that the first several turns of the player will be always "play all", so that's what I was hoping to accelerate. Either that or - a suggestion - after doing an action in a location (deck/card), if the location becomes empty (i.e. if you won't be able to do anything there again) just move the cursor to the "next" selectable item. I could imagine that - assuming we're not auto-drawing at start - after drawing, the icon would go to the first-left-card on your hand. If you play it, it moves to the one on its right, and so forth. That way, if you want to play all, you just press "Z" 5 times, rather than "Z", "arrow", "Z", "arrow" until the end. If you auto-draw, nothing prevents you from doing the same as well and moving the cursor to the left-most card first and doing the same. Not sure, just a thought.
- I empathize :) It's really just that, unless there are times you do not want to attack the boss for strategic reasons, it could be that the end turn would "select the boss" (so it shows), "apply damage", and then do the rest as normal.
Just some thoughts, but regardless, thank you for the great game! :)
Also, there's a slight glitch where, when you play the last card in your hand, the cursor still stays there. What that causes is that, when you navigate back to the bottom row (where your hand is), the cursor will select a space that's not useable at all, even though it'll still say "Read/Play" in the captions. That could be mitigated by my remark number 5 or a variant of it.
This is amazing. Victory really seems to boil down to how many high-health monsters come up at the beginning of the game; I just give up if I see two monsters >4 health in the first few rounds.
Bug report: I died and chose to try again. Now I'm in a state where there are zero cards in my deck and graveyard, and I can't proceed other than to just pass my turns.
pops head around corner
Did someone say they need more tokens?
...
Here you go, 1020 hot fresh tokens just for you.
https://gist.github.com/sparr/bad6793b1edb8f3e8b8a2cefadfad037
re the bosses being unlockable, maybe make the lock icon more prominent. I didn't recognize it the first few times I saw it. A black outline might do the trick. Making the lock a brighter color would certainly do it.
@sparr WOW! Thank you! The code is less readable but now I am able to do a lot of changes! The new update will come on saturday!
@pjft Wow thanks for that! I want to answer but instead I do the next best thing and fixes a lot of your comments, I think you will like the changes :) I am really happy for your feedback!
@Elastiskalinjen I just updated the gist with much more readable and maintainable versions of the splitd() strings using newlines instead of semicolons. Only catch was adding a new case to get_effects_desc_id to insert newlines into effects descriptions which cost a few tokens.
@Elastiskalinjen by all means, just happy to help. Looking forward to seeing what's next:)
Thanks @sparr for freeing up some tokens:)
I'd love to see an explanation of the boss icons like the broken shield (which I figured out) and the bomb (which I haven't), and the meaning of the +++ under the leftmost lane slot, and also I don't understand why/how/when lane cards get removed and replaced by the boss? Also why do some boss attacks get stronger and some don't?
request to increase difficulty: card destroys should persist between rounds. currently it's cheap to play a legendary sword as your last card, or to kill a redheaded dragon when you have no cards left, and that seems too forgiving.
@sparr those + seem to be the number of copies of that card that you have in your deck/that you have bought.
@sparr Bomb icon means that the boss will remove all lane cards on attack.
I do not agree with destroy should persist, as it is one of the strongest effects in the game. Keeping it would make the effect would make the game easier not harder.
The dots under the shiny knight represent how many cards you could buy of him before it will be replaced by normal lane cards. That is implemented so that you do not overuse it.
(also you did actually break a lot of effects :D in your hunt to find tokens, manage to fix it though)
@sparr also all bosses increase its attack, but they all increase in different speed, that is the boost effect I tried to explain.
I found some of my breakage and updated the gist. Sorry for others :(
If the breakage is too much to be worth fixing you could just take the splitd-ification of the arrays; that alone is worth hundreds of tokens.
@sparr I seem to have found everything, no need to exuse yourself! ☺️ Just thankful to be able to do some changes for all of you ☺️ so thanks again!
I must comment that while I found myself quite enjoying the actual playing of this game, gating the content behind a pointless XP grind currently prevents me from exploring it further.
I'm too lazy to mod the source. I'm sure there's an xp variable somewhere. But it's bad design.
@ @Xii. Sorry to hear that. The reason that xp exist is to not let you go to a too difficult boss at the start. Try to be a little more positive and constructive in your feedback ♥️
There's your design issue. I'm already GOOD AT this type of game. So when you prevent me from moving on to more challenging content, I get bored and stop playing.
Can you imagine if Super Mario didn't let you advance to the next stage until you collect 100 one-ups on the easiest ones? Let the player decide their appropriate level of difficulty. Don't force easy mode on them.
This feedback cannot be 'constructive' because by definition it is 'reductive' -- I'm advising you to REMOVE something from your game because it's bad design.
If you want to keep the level progression, then merely require winning a set number of times against each boss. Two, at most. (to guard against a single fluke)
Preventing the player from playing your game is probably the silliest design mistake :)
@Xii Will see what I can do! ☺️ Will probably xeep the xp for backgrounds, bosses you unlock as you play!
I'm enjoying this quite a lot! Nice card artwork, and a decent amount of variety within relatively simple mechanics, like a good deck building game should.
Really fun deckbuilding game! I like the enemy cards that appear, really gives it an interesting element and choice to the player.
Currently stuck on 'Number Two', the bird boss, it's a challenge! (Edit: just beat him after changing my strategy up a bit)
@Xanthus thank you ☺️ Fun to see the pico8 community liking deck builders 🙏🏻 great job, he is quite difficult!
...that's odd - it doesn't seem to be saving progress in the latest update. Or loading saved progress.
I'd unlocked everything before the unlock update, and when that update was posted, it loaded in with everything locked - which I'd assumed was intentional? But I played it for a while in that session and unlocked a couple bosses, and then in my next session everything was locked again.
Checked again and it seems to be working? I beat the first boss and it saved my progress.
Could be something changed in how the forum version of PICO-8 stored cartridge data, or in Firefox, but that does suggest there's nothing wrong with the cart.
@packbat maybe it was just the cache that have been removed. Will still look into it in the weekend! Thanks for the updates!
Oh, the zero-cards-on-retry bug showed up again. Still don't know what the pattern is.
This is a shot in the dark, but so far, I've only seen it happen in browser, and I know that browser PICO-8 has different intermittent issues than standalone PICO-8 ... is there (for example) anything happening on a _draw() step that could cause the problem if that _draw() step were skipped?
I haven't played a lot in PICO-8 on my computer so it doesn't mean that much that I haven't seen it happen in the regular engine, but maybe it's a possibility to examine.
Ohh, I think I caught the bug happening on GIF! And it did happen in the Windows binary version of PICO-8, so it is probably not any kind of running-out-of-resources bug.
The loading screen after ending the turn when I lose:
My having lost:
"RETRY" dropping me into a game with an empty deck:
Edit: if you need the full gif, we can send that over - I think we accidentally changed the settings to record 120 seconds (the max), so it's 26.5 MB and has a big chunk of the game leading up to the bug manifesting.
@packbat thanks for the update! Will see if I can look at it again in the weekend😊
(edit: I triggered it after testing it 20 times, seems to be hard to reproduce). Done some changes of the code have not seen it again) Will push new version tommorrow!
Update: still seeing the bug - as far as we've observed, when we lose a game with a partial hand and an empty deck (all cards either in hand or in discard), the next game starts with an empty deck.
Sounds good - thanks for the update!
(And thanks for making the game - it's been really really fun.)
@packbat, New version, I think the fix was in this one, was quite long ago now. Thanks, I am really glad that you liked it!
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