Controls
◀ ▲ ▼ ▶: select cards and select end turn button
z key: select a card or place a card
x key: de-select card. Holding x restarts the match.
Rules
The goal of the game is to either run out of cards in your deck and hand or make it so that your opponent can't play two cards on their turn.
1) descending stack: You must play a card that is lower on the going down pile.
(starting at 60 and ending at 2)
2) ascending stack: You must play a card that is higher on the going up pile.
(starting at 2 and going to 60)
3) You can only play one card on your opponents stack per turn. And it must improve their stack.
That means it must make their ascending pile “lower” or his descending
pile “higher”.
(further explanation: on this enemies stack that goes starts with high cards and then goes lower (60 -> 2), they currently have a 3 on the pile. You would be able to play any card above a 3 to improve their pile)
4) The Backwards Trick
There is one single exception that lets you play in the reverse order on both of your own piles: whenever the value of the number card is exactly 10 higher or lower.
(explanation: in the example above the stack goes from 60 -> 2 (descending stack). it is currently at a 38 which would normally mean you have to play a card lower than 38 (like 30,11,5, etc.) in this case, however, the player has a 48, which they are able to play because 48 is exactly 10 more than 38. So they can play the 48 to improve their descending stack. Now they can play any card lower than 48).
5) You must play at least 2 cards on your turn (you can play more).
(if you played a card on your opponent's stack, you redraw up hand size of 6. Otherwise you just draw 2).
Solitaire Rules
1) Rules 1,2, and 4 are the same as above except you start with 98 cards.
2) you own all 4 piles and can play cards freely on any of the 4 piles following all the rules in (1).
3) you always draw back up to hand size when you end your turn.
Solitaire difficulty goes from green to red with hand sizes going from 8 to 6. Smaller hand sizes being harder.
The Soul Opponents
defeating all 4 souls is how you beat the game!
Thanks
Thank you as always to my wife for being supportive of my little projects and the cool Pico 8 community!
It's very fun, I think I'm just dumb. Also, should it let me play it here?
@pk_archie not a dumb question at all! You have to "improve" your opponents pile (the brown piles). It's the rule number 3 above, the picture might help. You would need to have a something higher than a 5 to play on that pile.
Rule number 3 take the most time to get used to since you have to basically play the opposite of what the pile arrow is saying. I hope this help :).
- I think the phrasing of "improving" your opponents pile is causing a lot of confusion it took me a while to realize what it meant. Maybe there's a better way to phrase it like "reversing the direction" or something along those lines.
- This game is a lot of fun but I have no idea how to actually win in it.
Is the only way to win to have your opponent not have any more moves they can play?
@V--R that is a good point! I'll have to think about the wording. Maybe the board game rules have some wording I can use.
You win be either you opponent not being able to discard 2 or if you run out of cards :)
Edit: I went ahead and updated the instructions. Hopefully that makes things a bit more clear. Let me know if you have any other thoughts!
I'd like to recommend making it that when you beat the game it can spit you back to the main menu when you click again in case you want to play again. Also I didn't know running out of cards was a potential lose condition; here I was thinking it was a potential way to win and was trying to clear out as many cards as I could.
It could be a lot of fun seeing a multiplayer mode for this, but that would involve revealing your cards which destroys a bit of it.
You running your deck out is a win condition as well, so you do want to clear out all of your cards as efficiently as possible!
Unless you fully complete the game (beat all 4 ai) you should be able to push "O" to return to the menu. The "final game over" makes you restart the cart to return to menu just so folks can take pictures if they want :).
Yeah, multiplayer card games are tough on Pico-8 someone made a really cool Skull port that handles hidden info pretty well, but it is awkward having to have other folks look away from the screen on your turn. It might actually work if people hand off the handheld when it is not their turn or something like that! The best way to do card games is for both players to have their own screen.
[Please log in to post a comment]
