Cardwhisper

Cardhole Cardwhisper is a small, experimental game project that mixes King's Field inspired dungeon crawling movement and environments with a card spell casting system. It was made for the Toucan Do It!: Empty the Nest jam.

The game is very short (can be completed in less than 30 minutes), but mastering its gameplay mechanics can be challenging.

How to play:

CONTROLLER
Move forward/backwards: left joystick
Turn: right joystick
Run/interact/next message: south button (A)
Combine cards: west button (X)
Skip card: east button (B)
Draw card: north button (Y)
Cast spell: right trigger
Dodge forward/backwards: left trigger + left trigger
Dodge sideways: shoulder buttons

KEYBOARD:
Move forward/backwards: w/s
Turn: a/d
Run: left shift
Interact: f
Next message (when in dialog): enter
Combine cards: up arrow
Skip card: z
Draw card: x
Cast spell: c
Dodge forward/backwards: space + w/s
Dodge sideways: q/e

Simple guide:

When you have cards, the stack will be displayed in the lower left corner of the screen. Press Draw card, then Cast spell to cast a spell and consume the card. You can draw up to 3 cards and combine them by pressing Combine cards. Once combined, you can cast the result spell pressing Cast spell. If you press Cast spell, the cards will be combined and cast automatically to make it easier to cast combined spells quickly.

Each drawn card has a value that adds up and displays in the upper left corner of the screen. This value is a factor that affects the damage received and inflicted. To reduce received damage or increase dealt damage considerably, make sure the value is always higher than the enemy's.

To increase the damage output of your spell considerably, try to always combine cards of the same element. For example, combining 2 fire cards will result in a spell more powerful than the one cast from a single fire card. Combining 3 fire cards will result in the most powerful fire spell available. When you combine different elements, the resulting spell will be of the repeated element in the combination (for example: fire + fire + ice = fire). If the combination has 3 different elements, the resulting element will be the element of the first card (for example: ice + thunder + fire = ice).

Enemies have elemental resistances based on the spells they cast. Fire wielding enemies have resistance to fire, but are weak to ice. Ice wielding enemies are the opposite. And thunder wielding enemies only have resistance to thunder.

If you run out of cards, jump into the abyss to restart the game, or restart the game from the pause menu (esc or start).

Survival tips:

- Keep your card factor higher than the enemy's.
- Dodge frequently.
- Explore every corner looking for card treasure containers.
- Never run out of cards.
- Play with a controller.

Thanks for playing.

UPDATE LOG:

Cardwhisper V2 
- Fixed issue with card system that was preventing the combined card number to be counted when calculating damage.

DISCLAIMERS:
If you play too much, the game can crash.