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Cart #jostitle-7 | 2021-11-11 | Code ▽ | Embed ▽ | License: CC4-BY-NC-SA
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Jack of Spades is a game I made as a submission for GitHub's GameOff game Jam.

This is the latest version, with a lot more content than it had in the jam. I ended up making it a multicart, because I couldn't manage to keep it under the token/compression limits.

The game autosaves, you can play it on multiple sessions. It is played just with the mouse, so you can easily play on phones too.

There's an executable version here: https://bonevolt.itch.io/jackofspades

This is how to equip items (not explained during gameplay):

But you have to get the items first!

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New version released. Now with new game+ and a new final boss!

This is the last version before 1.0, which will have a tutorial and a challenge mode where you play against infinite waves of enemies to see how far you can get!

Looks very good but cannot start it (in browser).
Keeps swiping the black screen over and over :/

multicarts are not supported on BBS - that might explain why.

Weird, I just tested it, and the first try it happened as you described, but the second time it worked.

I'm assuming that in my case the 2nd cart wasn't downloaded fast enough the first time, but in the second try it was already downloaded.

I'll have to find a way to make the game reliably download all carts before going forward. Thanks for the feedback!

In any case, if anyone runs into this problem and don't have a pico-8 purchased, you can download the EXE version on the itch.io page. It will run better than the browser version too.

Ok, the game was not creating a usable save file the first time, so you had to click "clear data", but it's fixed now. It will still keep swiping a black screen if it doesn't download the game fast enough, so I have to make a nicer looking "loading" screen in the next version.
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The multicart certainly worked for me! So it may be a case by case issue, a loading screen could help the few times it does happen.

Outside of that, the design is wonderful, I'm having a blast exploring this cart! Congratulations on getting 6th in the jam, and thanks for adding more of your charm into the game. 1.0 will certainly be exciting! Good luck!
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Thanks Peter, it means a lot! :)
The story mode is almost done, I'll just add custcenes to flesh out the characters and a piece of art in the ending, with a completion rating.

The challenge mode, teased in this version will have a buch of new stuff though!
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A true PICO-8 Mouse turn-based RPG with playing cards. I was working on something like this with a deck of real playing cards. Yours is complete though and plays well !

As that unseen beautiful woman says in Metal Gear Solid, "Impressive !"

You get a STAR and a HEART for this very much thinking game !

Thanks a lot, dw817! :)

I made a game with real cards a few years ago too! The 12 kings/queens/jacks were the caracteres Ana the cards 2 to 10 were uses to count the caracteres Hp and the Aces were spell cards. I think you can guess the name of that game. Hahah :)

Designing actual card games is a lot harder that It may seem, though. It has to manage to be a lot simpler than a electronic one but at the same time retain it's depth. It would be cool to make a physical game at some point. Itch.io has jams for board/card games too. Who knows :)

Updated the game: New cutscenes, tutorial and balance changes!

Full changelog here!

Is there any chance to get multi cart download? I am not into .exe's as you can't launch them from pico. If not, I understand. I just prefer to stay inside pico when I'm in there.



Doing the tutorial. Found if you click in the wrong spot the tutorial continues as if you did the right thing.

In this case I was supposed to put a plant creature on a choice of tiles, I chose a different tile (to test it) and the demo skipped placing it and incorrectly continued as if it were there.

Still a marvel of a turn-based RPG and game. Didn't know how robust and fool-proof you wanted the tutorial to be.

@hseiken It would require some work for you to get it running offline, I put the .p8 version up there in the opening post

@dw817 I tried to leave options in as long as they didn't break sequence (you can also heal the surviving character, so the tutorial ends up taking one less turn). In the plants' case, I put the arrows on the usual optimal places (to avoid focus fire) as a way to subtly incentivize making the "correct" play.

@BoneVolt - great job! Any chance on getting controller support at some point?

@pjft Yes, I will add controller support in the final update. It has to be the absolute last thing I will make in this cart, because I'll have to duplicate every cart to have a mouse and a controller version. It will be too messy to change anything after that (the game uses 4 carts already), so it has to be the last thing.

I'm working on other stuff right now, not sure exactly when I will finish Jack of Spades, but it will happen :)
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Oh my, of course - no hurry there. Will be rooting for this on the sidelines :)

Thanks for the answer!
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This is amazing! 999/10.
i had tons of fun playing.
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Wow :)
You put a smile on my face
Thank you very much!
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Great game, but how do you win the hard final battle?!
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(Credit screen)

Brilliant game! A huge amount of beautiful and polished content, all very player friendly. (Edit2: With player friendly I meant great UX and all that stuff)
The difficulty was good to my taste. Not Dark Souls, but made you think your moves through.
Nice world building and dialogue too :)

Edit:
Oo there's a hard mode! Gotta try it out at some point.

By the way, is this info outdated?
>To play on your PICO-8 app download this version (put them all on your "..\pico-8\carts\" folder and open "jostitle.p8")

Seemed to work fine from SPLORE.
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Can't seem to defeat one of the bosses

@andyz Thank you! :)

Someone asked the same question on itch io a few days ago :)
I'm gonna paste my answer here:

SPOILERS


Put heroes with high HP on the sides and low hp, high attack heroes (Spades and Clubs) on the back. The black king can be in any position since he has high HP and attack, but he's probably best on the center.

For the first few turns, try to keep most allies alive while using the most cards possible, and try kill a few enemies so you have more units than them (area attacks won't help you much here, since you will lower their HP, but not decrease their numbers). Focus on the minions first. The queen alone is no problem.

Some cards that are particularly good in this battle:

Defense for all (♠10, ♦10, ♣7) - Increase defense in early turns;

Heals (♥A, ♥3) - Use heals to revive allies later on;

Summons (♥2, ♥5, ♥10, ♥J, ♣4) - Keep them far apart, as white queen's attacks hit neighboring enemies;

Stone form+Taunt (♦4+♦7) - Can negate an entire turn of damage (use both on King of Diamonds preferably);

Confusion (♦8) - Use it on the queen, so she can attack other enemies, or even heal your allies!

Anti-magic wind (♣5) - You can use it to either remove Rook's +4 defense or to remove Knight's attack aura (-1 attack for all);

Invisibility (♣10) - If you're left with only 1 hero, use invisibility. You'll be invulnerable for 2 turns! With some heals and summons you can turn the tides!

Wind blast (♣Q) - You can use it early on to push the pawns out of the field!

Blizzard (♣K) - Freeze 'em all!

And remember that most of the time, it's better to use 3 average cards than 1 good card, because it will cycle more new cards to your hand.

Good luck :)

@noppa Thank you very much! It works in splore, but you have to have connection to the internet, since it will load a BBS cart.

@CrazyNyanCat Not sure what's the relation between the image you posted and the boss...? You have a lot of battles in this map before reaching the boss :p The strategy for the first boss is the same as the final boss mentioned above in the spoiler tag, you just don't have to worry about Rooks and Knights. Also the white king reduces your allies damage when he hits them. Avoid that by placing a summoned unit in front or freezing him, and be sure to use the most cards you can each turn. Since your characters likely aren't at max level at that point, pick the ones that have the highest level (hover the mouse over them on the character selection box).

As a last resort you can:


As a last resort you can activate Blitz Mode in the title screen. Press uppercase B (SHIFT+B or CAPS LOCK>B) in the title screen to activate it (but you have to do it after the tutorial). An icon in the top right corner of the title screen will confirm it worked. All characters, enemies and allies will have 1 HP so you can win with a card that hits multiple enemies easily. Please only use it if you're really stuck. You can deactivate the code by going back to the title screen.
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I played it, was completely blown away! Are you sure you didn't trick me into a fever dream to get better ratings?
regaurdless I have no idea how multi cart works on the BBS. I thought you had to fit everything into the one cart, can you load other carts? and if so how did you keep my levels and items etc, like WTF? anyways it's super impresive and you get a good job from me!
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Hahah! Thank you very much :)

Multicarts work on the BBS pretty much the same way as outside of the BBS. You LOAD("cart"), but instead of using "cart.p8" you use "#cart" (the name of the cart is under the game screen).

You can save progress the same way as you would in a single cart, with cartdata(), dget() and dset(). The only difference is that there are multiple carts reading and writing the same save file. In this case I use cartdata("bonevolt_jack_of_spades") in all carts so they all reference the same save file.

sorry for the late reply, that's interesting!, I could see that being useful if you don't have a ton of savedata to save..
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Amazing game. Had a ton of fun playing it. I think there's a bug though. Once I got to the black king, all newly added party members just show [nil] for the dialog instead of the actual dialog.

@tmountain Thanks! That bug happens sometimes because some of the dialogs are stored in a separate cart, and it sometimes doesn't load for some reason... Not sure what triggered it in your case.

Luckily newer versions of pico-8 have a bigger compressed limit, so I can fix it easily in the next version by not using that trick at all :P
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Can you update this version that supports mobile phones on https://bonevolt.itch.io/jackofspades ? The game save cannot save on this website, refresh or close the page and the game save will be lost.
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This game is fun, and I'm imagining this game being like... like some kind of really popular game made by a well known company with a co-op mode, or an online vs mode. You made a really good game, and I really like this really good game, but if it weren't on lexaloffle, it'd be way better, not saying it's not good now (If you couldn't tell from what I said 3 lines up), but I think there could be way more to this game. I'd give this 2 or 3 stars if I could.
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Oh my god how did you do this??? One of my favorite carts of all time now that I've played it, amazing job!

Also I've compiled a list of all the cards and their effects, as a sort of cheat sheet. Enjoy!

♠️A: Silver Sharp: Increases the attack of one ally by 3 for 8 turns.
♠️2: Fireball: Deals 8 damage to the target, and also deals 4 damage to any enemies touching the target.
♠️3: Honor: The targeted ally attacks twice instead of once for 2 turns.
♠️4: Empower: Increases the attack of all allies by 2 for 4 turns.
♠️5: Fire Bomb: Deals 7 damage to the target, and also deals 7 damage to any enemies touching the target. Fire Bomb may target an empty tile, and any enemies touching that tile will take 7 damage.
♠️6: Metal Blade: Deals 12 damage to one target, and ignores armor buffs.
♠️7: Soul Blade: Deals 1 damage to the target for every HP point the user is missing from their max HP. For example, if the user had 33/40 HP, Soul Blade would deal 7 damage without factoring in armor.
♠️8: Fire Storm: Deals 5 damage to all enemies.
♠️9: Ultra Blade: Deals 7 damage to all enemies, and ignores armor buffs.
♠️10: Super Armor: Increases the armor of all allies by 2 for 4 turns.
♠️J: Ultra Sharp: Increases the attack of one ally by 8 for 2 turns.
♠️Q: Ultra Fire: Deals 4 damage to the user and 7 damage to all enemies.
♠️K: Ultra Armor: Halves the damage that the target takes for 4 turns.

♥️A: Heal: Heals the targeted ally for 8 HP.
♥️2: Sleeping Seed: Plants a flower with 10 HP, 5 ATT, and the Sleep condition, which means it cannot attack until it is attacked. The sleeping seed inflicts Poison upon attack. Poisoned targets lose 1 HP at the start of their turn for every time Poison is inflicted on them.
♥️3: Heal Allies: All allies are healed for 5 HP.
♥️4: Corrosion: Lowers the target's armor by 3 for 4 turns.
♥️5: Static Cactus: Plants a flower with 10 HP, 5 ATT, and the Electrified condition. Enemies who attack an electrified ally take the same amount of damage they dealt.
♥️6: Barrier: Creates a barrier around one ally. When the barrier takes 12 or more total damage, it breaks.
♥️7: Flood: All enemies with 15 or less HP are instantly killed.
♥️8: Rust: All enemies lose 1 armor for 4 turns.
♥️9: Heartbreak: All enemies lose 3 armor when attacked by cards for 4 turns.
♥️10: Muncher: Plants a flower with 15 HP and 3 ATT. When the muncher attacks, it heals the same amount of damage it does to the target.
♥️J: Multi Flower: Plants a flower with 5 HP, 5 ATT, and splash damage.
♥️Q: Super Barrier: Shields the target from attacks but breaks if one attack does 9 or more damage, or after 4 turns.
♥️K: Flood Bubble: Deals 1 damage to the target for every HP point the target is missing from their max HP. For example, if the target had 33/40 HP, Flood Bubble would deal 7 damage without factoring in armor.

♦️A: Super Focus: Multiplies one ally's critical hit chance by 3 for 4 turns.
♦️2: Thunder: Deals 15 damage to one enemy.
♦️3: Boulder: Deals 10 damage to the target and pulls them one square to the right.
♦️4: Taunt: All enemies are forced to attack the targeted ally for 1 turn. Taunt overrides confusion.
♦️5: Fissure: All enemies in the targeted column take 8 damage.
♦️6: Shock: Deals 6 damage to the leftmost enemy on the targeted row and the leftmost enemies on the rows touching the targeted row.
♦️7: Stone Form: Transforms one enemy into stone for 3 turns. In this state, enemies only deal 1 damage and heroes only deal 1 damage to them.
♦️8: Confusion: Inflicts Confusion on the targeted enemy for 4 turns. Confused enemies have a 50% chance to target an enemy instead of a hero.
♦️9: Electrify: Electrifies an ally for 4 turns. Enemies who attack an electrified ally take the same amount of damage they dealt.
♦️10: Fear: Lowers attack of all enemies by 2 for 4 turns.
♦️J: Static: Deals damage to the leftmost enemy in the targeted row and the leftmost enemies in the rows that touch the targeted row. The total damage dealt between all 3 enemies always equals 20 or 21.
♦️Q: Quake: Deals 5 damage to every ally and enemy on the field except for the user. Targets are hit again for every entity that touches them.
♦️K: Overwhelm The targeted enemy loses 4 attack for 4 turns.

♣️A: Super Bow: Attacks one enemy 4 times. Each hit deals 3 damage.
♣️2: Freeze: Freezes one target for 2 turns. Frozen enemies cannot attack.
♣️3: Wind Shot: Deals 9 damage to one target and pulls them two squares to the left.
♣️4: Dummy: Plants a dummy with 20 HP. The dummy does not attack.
♣️5: Anti-Magic Wind: The target is pulled one square to the left, and all stat modifiers and conditions are removed. If the target is an enemy, they take 5 damage.
♣️6: Track: All allies are forced to attack the targeted enemy for 2 turns.
♣️7: Mind Freeze: All enemies cannot critical hit for 6 turns.
♣️8: Sleep: Inflicts Sleep on the targeted enemy. Sleeping enemies cannot attack. Sleeping enemies wake up when attacked or after 9 turns.
♣️9: Vacuum: Deals 4 damage to all enemies, and pulls them vertically one square closer to the targeted row. If an enemy is on the targeted row, they do not move.
♣️10: Invisibility: Enemies may not attack the targeted ally for 2 turns.
♣️J: Ultra Bow: All enemies are attacked 4 times. Each hit deals 2 damage.
♣️Q: Wind Blast: Deals 4 damage to all enemies, and pulls them vertically one square away from the targeted row. If an enemy is on the targeted row, they do not move.
♣️K: Blizzard: Freezes all enemies for 1 turn. Frozen enemies cannot attack.
3

I wasn't prepared for how good this is. The graphics and animation are beautiful, the battle animations in particular make the combat easy to follow and satisfying. Such a long game too, really good use of multiple carts, my first play-through was well over an hour and as soon as I finished it I started right on with a second run through the game.

I really appreciated the tutorial, often card games like this can be pretty impenetrable to start with, the tutorial really clearly introduces the game mechanics. It didn't take me long to understand what I was supposed to be doing in the combat and this made the start of the game much more fun than I usually expect on games like this.

Anyway, this is clearly outstanding and I enjoyed this a lot, so I recorded a video review/play-through of it:
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Thanks, everyone!

@kssodi Sorry for the late response. I just updated the itch.io page with the latest version. Let me know if you have any issues.

@Vinnyc11 I'm happy you think this way :) This game was initially intended to be a bigger project, I made the pico version to test the ideas. The full release might happen someday, but it might take a while.

Great game! How do I get the last of the items and battles? I'm 100% sure I explored everywhere.
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@Nightshade Thank you! New game+ has harder battles, which accounts for the 22 missing ones. You also keep your items and levels in NG+, so you can get all the items with multiple playthroughs.
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@BoneVolt Yep figured that out about 10 minutes after asking! Thanks though. All of your games are amazing, this one and Crowded dungeon crawler are personal favorites of mine.
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wow. just wow i saw someone gave it a 999/10 so i will one up them and give you a well deserved 9999/10. seriosly i would pay for this game. please dont make me tho
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Hahaha, thank you very much!
I want to turn it into a full game someday. You will get your opportunity to pay then haha :)

When i do the tutorial it pulls up a weird screen

@Lilshrk What kind of screen? Usually, it should be the world map, where you click on the tiles to explore.

@BoneVolt it dose this



@Lilshrk It should be fixed now. Thanks for letting me know

I can't play the final round of the tutorial

After the round where you use the 2 of hearts and the 2 of spades it doesn't let me press the play button to use the Ace of hearts but it lets me unselect it using the red button

The tutorial is glitched as everyone else is saying. It won't let you use the final card.

It should be fixed now. I also fixed some bugs introduced in pico v.0.2.3.

Added a new cart label too with 32 colors enabled :D

Noice
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ggs

This was an awesome game. I had a lot of fun playing it.
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I like the game, but I wish you could use keyboard controls too. Especially for moving through the world.


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