Drag the cards to the board to use them to manipulate the pieces as they come down. There are left, right, and rotation cards. The cards will highlight green if they are acceptable to play, and red if they are not.

You can also choose to sacrifice a card to freeze the piece for a limited time (3 seconds). The card slot that is discarded will be out of play for awhile. It can be helpful to get the freeze time, but hurtful because you will less cards for that time. The longer the game goes, the more penalty time the discard takes to freeze the falling piece.

Known issues: HTML version- Audio play overlaps when the track speeds up (level 2, 4, 6, 8). It only lasts a couple seconds, but it can be jarring on the audio. If you plan on playing with audio, I recommend the desktop version, doesn't have that issue.

2 and 3 simultaneous line clears only cause the pieces above the highest cleared line to fall down 1 space- working on a fix, but not in time for the contest version.

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  • Jupiter Hadley
    Lv. 13

    Challenging game! I included it in my compilation video series of all of the GM48 games, if you’d like to take a look. :) https://youtu.be/3epPRcwgayM

  • Fachewachewa
    Patron

    It's a nice idea, but I really do not agree with discarding a card being the "helpful but hurtful" mechanic. You can play only one card at a time, chances are you dont need a lot for each piece. So discarding a card is actually a double positive, since you cycle your hand (getting rid of a card you don't need) for a potentially better one.

  • Problematicar
    Lv. 37

    I didn't really find any connection to the theme, but the idea is pretty nice, even though it ends up being pretty frustrating when you get bad cards :P

    Universe T
    Submitted

    Universe T

  • Kwis
    Lv. 67

    Heeeh, as far as I'm concerned, the RNG made it tedious sometimes. I once got 7 cards pointing to the left... I often end up focusing on the cards since I'm figuring out what to do with the cards available. I agree that making it turn-based might have been better. Not sure I am a fan of the mix between tetris and cards.

    I noticed a lot of games were intended for both LD41 and this Jam (including mine, although I made it specifically for gm48 and it just happened to it LD41 too), and often more for LD41. But it's not always noticeable... In this case though... it is. To the point of not really fitting the theme much :T

    • Joe Miller
      Lv. 21
      Joe Miller Developer of Cardramino

      6yrs ago

      Yeah, just the way the themes worked out I guess. I was hoping I'd come up with something where 1 theme would be the setting and the other the gameplay mechanic. A lot of people seem to be missing the point that the helpful but hurtful mechanic was supposed to be discard a card to freeze time (helpful) but be with less cards in your hand while time was frozen (hurtful). That's my fault because I didn't give it the attention as the gameplay mechanic that it should have, with more visual and audio cues, and with the feedback from other players, I would make the time freeze longer and open up other ability options available with discarded cards, like a bomb, or change the piece shape, etc.

      Maybe keeping it completely turn based would have been better, it just felt so slow to get started from the empty board.

      Anyway, that's the point of the jams right? I didn't really have a specific plan, so I just started focusing on making things function and then time just went so quickly!

      Thanks for the feedback!

  • Fin_Nolimit
    Lv. 6

    I got an amazing score of 5250. :)

    Very cool concept. I can see loosely the theme in that the cards do help you and can hurt you. I say loosely only because if you use the card correctly then it will always help you and if you use it incorrectly it will most likely hurt you. All though we could say the card bank both helps and hurts you as it will always give you cards... some helpful others very harmful. The music fit the vibe of the game and it felt good to play a game I use to love when I was a kid.

    Trials
    Submitted

    Trials

  • Veralos
    Lv. 38

    Really neat idea that shows some potential. It feels like Tetris at first but soon you realise that your moves and limited and you have to make them carefully. Unfortunately, it's clearly made to fit the Ludum Dare theme with no attention to the GM48 one.

    I felt like the rotation cards were a bit too rare. I would also have liked to be able to use the move 2/3/4 cards even if there isn't enough space - just make the block move as far as it can. Either that or a way to recycle cards you don't want so you don't just get stuck with unusable cards. It would also be cool to have rare cards with special effects to spice things up. Slow down time, clear a row, reshuffle your cards, spawn a helpful block, etc.

    • Joe Miller
      Lv. 21
      Joe Miller Developer of Cardramino

      6yrs ago

      Thank you for your feedback!

      That's my bad for not giving more focus to my helpful but hurtful mechanic of using the discard to freeze time (helpful) but being less cards in the hand for awhile (hurtful). Now that I've had more time to develop the idea, I would have liked to have visual effects for that, and developed it more as the mechanic, like with your idea of having other special effects. Maybe have the discard linked up to the options of special effects as a way to utilize cards in another way.

      I really like your ideas for the other special effects, I think i'd add like a bomb card too that could blow up a 3x3 spot or other shapes into the grid too, and maybe something like a 1x1 you can place to fill in anywhere on the board you want.

      I started out making it as completely turn based, where when you played a card, the block moved for the card, and then down 1 square (eventually 2,3,4 maybe with the level) but it felt really slow, so I went with having the speed set by the score.

  • AxeWizard
    Lv. 18

    This was a really cool idea, I got a 1050 score after a few moments of play. Eventually my deck was stacked with all Right ->->-> 3's and 4's, and the block seemed to spawn in the same spot, and it would not let me use any of my cards.

    I think it does sort of fit with the theme, the cards you get could be helpful, but also harmful if they are taking up slots that aren't used very much. Really good entry, kinda bummed that I got a deck stacked with useless cards but it was the luck of the draw!

    -- Ian

  • AceOfSpad3s
    Lv. 3

    A variation to a big classic, i like the concept, actually it is not so relevant to the gm48 theme and i have got the block stuck bug but overall you did a good job.

  • Panda-K
    Lv. 17

    I really like this idea (although I'd be keen for a turn-based version), but I don't understand how it ties into the theme. With the real-time version it would have been nice to get some benefit from pressing the down arrow (maybe there were points, but I didn't notice?) I would suggest making cards recharge faster when the down arrow is pressed so that faster play is rewarded!

    There was one bug that I found, where a block floated above where it should have landed (maybe there was a diagonal collision?)

    • Joe Miller
      Lv. 21
      Joe Miller Developer of Cardramino

      6yrs ago

      I actually started with a turn-based, but it felt really really slow - I think there could be something there if there were multiple pieces already in place and trying to get the tetris piece to match the spots needed maybe.
      I didn't think about using the down arrow speed up to effect other things, that's a great idea!
      I didn't really highlight the helpful but hurtful mechanic graphically very well. Now that I've had time to think about it, I would use some kind of hourglass animation and audio cues, that time is frozen after you discard a card, and that you can still play cards into the field to manipulate the piece while time is frozen. I think making the time stop should have been much longer too. I'm trying to reproduce the block stuck bug, but I haven't been able to get it to happen consistently yet, I know I was getting pretty worn out coding so I probably just need to look back through all my collision stuff. Thanks!

  • Toemking
    Lv. 2

    Cardanino is an excellent idea for a game and it very fun to play but I don't really feel like the game does much to fit into the theme harmful but helpful. To me it feels like it was a game build for Ludum Dare 41 where the theme was Combine 2 incompatible themes and was enterted into gm48 as an after thought. The game has a very unique and cool concept and I feel like it could be built on more to make a great game. The game lacks a bit in polish and has a few bugs like blocks getting stuck in places there not meant. I am a big fan of the song and the audio.

    • Joe Miller
      Lv. 21
      Joe Miller Developer of Cardramino

      6yrs ago

      I had been planning ahead of time to try to combine both themes when they were announced, I just didn't really know how it was going to come out until I started going. The helpful but hurtful mechanic wasn't as represented as well as I hoped with the ability to freeze time while discarding a card. The hurtful part being having less cards in your hand while time was frozen was the idea, but I didn't get a lot done to graphically represent the notion of discarding a card to freeze time as a main mechanic instead of just using it to throw away extra cards.

      I definitely ran into trouble getting the logic for testing rotation possible- so I know there were a couple bugs possible there, it was driving me crazy with the "L" and "J" pieces.

      Thanks for playing and giving the feedback, I'm glad you liked the song!

  • Aetherbot
    Lv. 2

    The sound and aesthetics are nice. I think the idea is really cool but it's kinda frustrating when you get screwed by rng lol. Also, there were two times when a piece stopped before it landed. Overall the game is pretty neat and it definitely made me yell at my computer screen (which is probably a good thing.)

    Horde
    Submitted

    Horde

    • Joe Miller
      Lv. 21
      Joe Miller Developer of Cardramino

      6yrs ago

      Thanks for playing! If I continue working on it, i'd like to make it a bit more like Tetris so that it would draw cards/pieces from a "deck" so that there wouldn't be 4x the same card of piece in a row kind of thing.

Considering the theme finalists, I was leaning toward trying out some kind of tower defense game, since I haven't made one yet. My plan was to combine the themes from Ludum Dare and GM48 using one for the setting and one for the mechanics. I got the card manipulating the tetris piece working pretty rapidly, but ran into a couple collision issues with the "L" and "J" and "N" and "Z" block types, which my fix still left a bug that made it into the jam version where they can still sometimes get stuck. And then I hit the next issue of actually detecting a tetris has occurred and being able to delete the line and drop the remaining blocks down. And then the being able to detect if rotation was possible to allow the cards to show red or green in real time for the possible moves. Anyway I got what could done on Saturday, and Sunday was mostly finishing up the music, title screen, and tutorial screens.

What Worked:

Keeping the "active" piece's ID in a global variable made it easy for the cards to know which object they should be controlling. When a piece "locks in" by touching the bottom or another piece, the shape is deleted and replaced by individual blocks that can be destroyed independently of the shape they came down as.

What Didn't Work:

Rotation is still a mess, I need to go back through and come up with a different plan for handling collisions. The freeze time mechanic did not get represented or implemented well as a mechanic.

What to change:

Add an hourglass animation to the UI that shows how much longer time is frozen. Remove the cooldown from drawing cards, and make it so the card discarded to freeze time does not have a timer, but is just grayed out during the freeze. So the mechanic would be to discard a card, and be able to still play other cards during the freeze, but then have a recovery cooldown after time is unfrozen, freeze again, and be without 1 more card again.

Link to timelapse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AJH7S2NGapc

Result 28th
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