The Hand You're Dealt

Gain Jam Gain Jam 8/2024
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Hey, Chair here. I’d like to present to you my submission to the 2024 Gain Jam: a card game called The Hand You’re Dealt.

The idea of the game is fairly simple. You try to make food with ingredients that don’t quite match the recipe. I don’t usually like card games, but I think the concept is well suited to a card game and fits the whole theme of surprises and unexpected outcomes.

Of course, this doesn’t quite live up to the potential I’d envisioned. I’ve never really made a card game before, and trying to build this made me really step out of my comfort zone. As a result, I ended up having to really reign in my ideas on this one, to the point where I think it lost a lot of the “make food with mismatched ingredients” aspects. That stuff relied on other systems that I just didn’t have time for. On top of that, the actual card game is pretty lack-luster, I think. There’s potential there, but I didn’t have time to sit down and really think about how to make a card game out of this idea.

Still, I’m glad I pushed through and finished. Feels nice having something released for a change, even if it’s not what I wanted. I might be interested in restarting this project from stretch at some point if people are interested enough in the concept, but for now, I’m going to take a break from game dev.

Also, I want to give a big shout-out to LongcrierCatAD for providing a few sketches that I could use in the game. You can find more of her art on her twitter at :purple_heart: Monster Mothers Inc.~ :purple_heart: (@LongcrierCatAD) / X

For those of you playing the game, I wanted to note a couple of things to keep in mind when playing.

I didn’t get a chance to implement volume control (mostly 'cause I just wanted to be done at this point), so headphones beware. I don’t think it’ll blow out people’s ears, but you never know. Also, while I did my best to squash bugs and prevent any weird behavior, I might have missed something. Thankfully, the game’s only like 20-30 minutes long or something, so getting stuck shouldn’t be too much of a problem.

The game also has 2 endings depending on how well you did, so be on the lookout for that.

Anyway, hope everyone enjoys the game and the rest of the Gain Jam.

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Big fan of the game. Love the office lady main char and would be super interested in seeing the story you had planned for her.

The gameplay took a second to get the hang of but once I did it was an enjoyable challenge. Does seem to sometimes boil down to if you get enough Muddles/Searches but all card games are pretty rng based. Great job!

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Yeah, the action cards aren’t the best, lol. Split was made with the idea that you might have to use a food card that gives you a large flavor you didn’t want, but in the end, I didn’t design anything where that would be very useful. Stir can be good if you need to save a large flavor from burning, but since the game was kinda jank already, I decided to err on the side of things being easier, so it ended up not being that useful. That’s what you get when you’re changing design ideas on the fly, lol.

Still, glad you enjoyed it. It was a nice challenge to work on.

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Very interesting game play. Didn’t even mind the short story, only thing of note is it action cards felt almost un-needed. I think with some more time you would have had time to strike a better balance, and flesh out the story, but all in all, very enjoyable.

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Could someone explain me how am i even supposed to use big flavors cards, once i get them? Game clearly explains that my goal is to match amount of big flavors with number that you can see on card, but how do i use these flavors once i get them?
DO i need to use every ingredient from list? How do i “transfer” flavors between ingredients? (When i switch from ground beef to pasta, i get whole new collection of flavors cards)
After reading tutorial i only understood what my goal is, but not how to achieve that.

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You just need the large flavors to exist on the board. The counters above your flavors will show how many large flavors you have on the board of each type, so as long as those numbers are going up. you’re good.

As for your questions regarding the ingredients, I originally intended players to have at least one of each type, but I didn’t implement that because the idea didn’t really pan out. Also, you don’t do anything with the ingredients after you play them. The only purpose of the ingredients are to gain flavors.

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I love the concept here. The card game feels unique but I do get the impression that in an ideal world I’d play the correct ingredients and combine them easily.

One major issue though- the interface for the small and large flavours. The large flavours are objectives, the small ones are resources- they need to be separated and certainly not indistinguishable without examining closely.

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If i switch ingredients, then does game count flavors from earlier ingredients as “existing one”? Or by board you mean flavors that i can see on middle of screen?
Also - what does happen if i’ve more big flavors that are needed to recipe? Do i need to have EXACT amount of every big flavor to match numbers on recipe, or can i have more?
Do small flavors somehow count towards flavors i’ve? Because i want to know what would happen if i finished cooking while having small flavors of (for example) bitterness in dish that requires 0 flavors for bitterness

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The only count of flavors that matter are the ones in the middle, yes. Like I said, ingredients are 100% irrelevant after you play them.

Small flavors don’t effect the recipe in any way.

Your final score is based on how close you were to the recipe’s large flavors. This means you can go over or under by one or two and still get the best outcome. there’s essentially 3 outcomes depending on how different your flavors are to the recipe.

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Thank you, i believe that now i understand almost everything.
Sadly as someone mentioned earlier - cards are barely useful, the only one that can really help you is card that gives you 2 neutral flavors, if you sacrifice three small flavors.
Other ones are almost useless and even when i used all ingredients, sometimes it was hard to get enough flavors.
Also - i got my first burnt card while making pizza, is burning supposed to be RNG or does it have some kind of rules?

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Also - i got my first burnt card while making pizza, is burning supposed to be RNG or does it have some kind of rules?

I believe that’s just what happens when a flavor runs out of hp, they all have a fraction on the bottom of the card that’ll decrease when you play more ingredients (and when you draw, I believe) - so you don’t just slam all ingredients immediately and then just combine after the fact.

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I must ask as it doesn’t appear to be listed in any music credits from what I could skim, but what was the music that features in the cooking game? It’s annoyingly catchy haha

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It’s a Kevin MacLeod song called “Master of the Feast.” Figured if I was grabbing royalty-free stuff I might as well lean into it and grab from him, and the name just sounded too perfect. The other song in the game, “Evening,” is also by him.

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