Overview
Card Duel was a fast paced game I had made for my Solo Game Dev class. The goal is to respond to the card shown in the center of the screen with the card that would beat it. With guidance from the teacher and other classmates, I designed the systems controlling the game cycles, player scores and high scores, integrated audio and visual feedback for the player to know different things, and the actual card designs.
I wanted to make something snappy and fast paced, something the player could open up, play a round, and be able to immediately jump back in so they could try and beat their high score. As such, I spent a long time and used a lot of my time in class trying to adjust the system itself to be as snappy as possible. Over time, many things got cut out, and I added in extra details like the card flick animation as well as the different visual and auditory feedbacks within the game to create a game that would make you say “Just one more try”.
Before Playtest
Progression
Prototype
My goal for this prototype was to just get the system established. Specifically making sure I was understanding Godot’s engine and able to get a desired outcome. As such, it ends up being a lot simpler of a concept than what my idea originally was. However, since this was my first time actually building something of my own from scratch, I felt it was a necessary step to take.
After Playtest
Initial Playtest
For my first playtest, I was able to test if my vision for Card Duel was able to go in a great direction. Simultaneously, I was able to also get some great feedback from my peers about where they think the idea could be improved. The biggest one by far was removing the countdown at the start of each round and shortening all timers involved in order to greatly increase the speed of the game.
Among other changes also includes visual changes to the arrows and location of the letters to better establish the ordering of the 4 cards as well as the inclusion of a difficulty selector for those players who wanted it. All things that were simple enough to include that went a long way to improving my games experience.