Justin Time: Man of the Hour

So funny,good game,interesting

Very nice and fun game. It would be nice if cards could be played in the extra time at the start of the round, it's not clear sometimes when you can actually start to drag a card. Melee cards are maybe a bit underwhelming because once they get this close it's almost game over.

The game doesn't run for me sadly.

The screen flashed black (connection to GPU stopped) and then Avast antivirus flagged it.

I had fun with this one! Very well done for a ludem dare. My only critiques would be:

It was kind of difficult to target enemies sometimes, and you could just end up using a card on and empty space

The indicator for how much time left you had, how much damage you did, and how much health you have were not very clear. If you only have 10 seconds to make decisions for your turn, everything needs to be as readable and instantly digestible as possible.

It was sometimes difficult to click on the intended card (it would kind of bug out)

Lastly, I wish there was more enemy variety.

Overall, I very much enjoyed this, the music was fun and it was an interesting/fun concept to play with. And I love roguelikes hehe

I can't believe this was made in only a few days! This is sooooo good! I'd totally play a full version of this if it had a story. The music is great, I was literally humming it for most of the game without realizing it. The art is cool and makes me think of Yu-gi-oh's Time wizard, but mixed with that Newgrounds style Flash artwork. The cards are all time puns. The first time I saw the boss I was like "what! Oh no!" This was really really well done.

I think my only complaint would be that I'm not sure how long each round goes on for, but it really feels like it's too long. Again, that's fine for a game jam, but if this were to get a full version, I'd expect more like almost puzzle based levels or little scrimmage matches akin to say Inscryption. Also, it may benefit from a better explanation of the rules. It took me a little while at first before I fully understood what I was doing. And a better indication of where the cards are attacking would be nice. There were several times where simply clicking a card placed it on an empty tile and others where I went to use a card and realized the enemy was actually one space back because they were floating. Maybe outline them in red or green if they're being targeted and make sure the player can't accidently play a card if they select it too quickly. Maybe a full click to select then a full click to place rather than click and drag.

Really loved this game though! I hope I get to see more of it in the future.

Page could use a few images

Nice gameplay, music is good too, although could do with some sound effects. Some cards didn't always work as intended, for example the card that damages all spaces barely ever worked properly for me. It either didn't do the right amount of damage or didn't damage all enemies. I only got it to work properly once and I don't know why. Overall a fun play though, good job.

Really cool game. Love the idea of using the rings/sections as damage targets.

Deckbuilding is always cool! I also really like the name of the game (one wonders why... maybe because I had a similar idea for my game? haha) anyway it was very cool well done!

@heine-hohenhart Haha, great minds think alike! I'll have to try Just In Time next! I always love me a good tower defense, looks like fun!

@huskitch That's a good note, adding some screenshots now!

@lonewolfdev Thanks so much!

@justaroom Thanks for the feedback! Sound affects for cards were on our todo! They're technically implemented and in the game, we just didn't get a chance to fill them in. Except Lickity Split, that has a slurping sound on it. We noticed the targeting bug too late. It's not actually a bug with the card affecting everyone, but with the game double spawning the same enemy, so it hits the original and the copy lives to see another day. We'll clean it up after the jam, but it feels dishonest to keep bug squashing after the deadline. Rest assured, we'll get to it!

@sliphtrex Holy cow, thank you so much for that. That means a lot. We're really proud of what we put together for this jam, and honestly I can hardly believe we got this all done too. Time wizard was absolutely thrown around during our ideation phase, though the inspiration for that character was... let's just say we called him Clockwork Mike.
We know the rounds were too long. We had originally wanted the boss to be something of a final boss but prioritized other aspects and made it into a sort of infinite runner instead. If we extend it further, I do think we'll need to have some sort of end goal. Also, trying to make the enemies more varies or have more health rather than introducing greater numbers.
All of those are good notes on gameplay/quality of life improvements. Maybe shadows can help with the placement of the flying enemies. I agree some reworking has to be done with the drag and drop, I play it on trackpad and constantly accidentally drop cards. Maybe if you're not targeting anything, it doesn't play the card.
Thanks for all the feedback, and thank you for wanting to see a fuller version of the game! We had so much fun making it that I'll definitely keep working on it, so keep an eye out to see if it shows up again somewhere!

@jonathan-vinesar Thanks for the feedback and I'm glad you liked it! Like I wrote above, we know that the card selection/targeting needed work. It worked well enough that we wanted to make sure we got more content in, but that meant a few bugs went unchecked. More enemy variation would be great, and so would more card variation! Thanks so much for your thoughts, for playing, and for having fun!

Thanks everyone for your feedback!

This was a really fun idea. Good incorporation of the theme in that it wasn't just a 10 second timer; it actively worked against you by reducing your resource pool to play cards. The artwork was nicely done and the music really keeps it pumping. It has that same vibe as like Rocky running through Philly.

The actual gameplay though was a little difficult at times. Visually the cards sometimes glitched when you hovered over them and they scaled up in size. It it seemed almost like a z-depth issue where the other cards were trying to draw over it? I also found myself accidentally using the card on an unintended space.

I think this could be a really nice mechanic in a game if polished up a little. Solid entry.

Hey @aristurtle, thanks for playing! I loved your entry, really fun!

Yeah, it is a Z-fighting issue. I've fixed it on my machine, but it didn't make it into our submission. Thank you for the feedback, I'm glad you liked it!

The artwork is done nicely and i truly like the name of the game😁

As other mentioned, biggest flaw is the card glitching.
Also later (10 mins into the game) the rounds start start to drag on as you play cards in 2-3 seconds and then wait 7 seconds until next turn with nothing to do (who could have thought that 10 seconds is too much time? :D)

with complaints out of the way. the game feels so good. the combination of music, art style, and theme is gorgeous.
props to all the different card effects and also the whole deck-building mechanic and its options.

Solid entry! Everything felt really cohesive. Loved how you used the theme

@frankey333 thank you for the feedback! I definitely agree that the rounds start to drag as you get further in. We talked about making the cards actually reduce the time in your turn, but that made the game feel too frenetic, whereas now there's a regular pace and rhythm. I was thinking of maybe adding an "end turn" button, so you don't have to wait for longer than you want to, but you can still catch your breath.

I'm really glad you liked it!

@mcmuniz thanks so much for the feedback! I'm glad you had fun!

i really liked playing this game! the idea is really clever, and i got hooked for way longer than i expected! great entry!

Wow, I really love how you integrated the theme entirely into the gameplay, this is one of my favorite applications of the theme so far. Your decision to break up the battlefield into sectors and rings was really clever, I'd love to see this idea expanded further in a complete product. Awesome work!

Thanks @dxk2294 , I'd love to keep working on it! We'll see where it goes in the future, but there will definitely be a 2.0 version that incorporates some bug fixes and feedback from these comments.

@amarokczukay Thank you for the review! I'm glad you enjoyed it!

Fun game! Bit difficult with targeting, when I selected a card it would often cover the column I needed to see so I sometimes missed because I couldn't see which ring the enemy was in. But I liked the graphics, the soundtrack provided extra urgency to the time limit, the gameplay is solid and I had a lot of fun playing it. Great job!

Even though the real time decision making was quite pressing, I never felt too stressed out during a round. I only played a couple games, but everything seemed quite well balanced!

Cards were easy to understand, but I had some trouble understanding how to aim some of them at enemies for the first few turns and then it clicked.

Overall a really great job, guys!

@digital-bacon Thanks for checking out our game! We rogue-like deckbuilders have to stick together, eh? It does seem like a few people had difficulty with the targeting. I think we would've benefited from some playtesters there. We talked about switching the card to a target, or something less obstructive. I kind of think even just making the card disappear without a mouse indicator might've been better (because then all you'd see is the highlighted spaces). That wouldn't have worked for the non-attack cards though. I'd love to hear your (or anyone else's) thoughts on what would've felt better. I'm so glad you had fun!

@rowdy3 Thanks for the feedback! I think trying to balance urgency and not stressing out the player too much was both really important and something we kinda lucked into. We made the decision early on that the cards should be drawing from your time pool, but shouldn't actually shorten your turn, and I think that wound up being key. It does mean the turns drag on a bit, especially once you start stacking up those extra second bonuses, so I think we would benefit from an "end turn" button.

As previously mentioned, seems like targeting is our weak point, but I'm glad it clicked. We figured it would take a round or two before it did, since we didn't manage to finish a full tutorial in time.

Thank you for playing and thank you for the feeback!

This is definitely my favorite game of the jam so far! Played for way too long :D
A bit on the easy side unfortuntely since "Maximum Overtime" is pretty busted and leads to long downtimes. Would have loved to skip the rest of the turn.
In the beginning I struggled a bit because I had to learn the cards but once I understood them it was a blast!
The music was also chosen perfectly as I kept humming along and felt like being right in the battle!
Amazing job, would even consider buying a full version which is better balanced :)

Good job with the game. I enjoyed the fast pace take on a card game and the ring system for enemies and attacks was cool. The small delay at the start of the turn to look at your cards was nice but I did notice the first turn doesn't get this. The different cards were cool and I liked the different targeting they all had, but I didn't end up really using the melee ones much. Overall very nicely done.

@sibi Wow, what a review! Thank you so much, I'm so glad you liked it so much! Tbh, I also played it for too long after we submitted... nice to enjoy what you made, but once the levels start being 200 people long it gets to be a little too much!

Maximum Overtime is extremely busted. The plan is to make it more expensive, probably 13 or 14. That way, you can't use it unless you either prep for it the turn before (so it's harder to pull off and a bit more "earned") or get a bunch of permanent time upgrades. At that point (once we introduce more enemy varieties), the enemies would be a bit beefier and take more damage to take down, so while extremely powerful, it shouldn't be an automatic board clear.

We also know we need an extensive tutorial. I think once you know what things are, the game flows pretty well, but learning-by-doing is too bumpy. But a step-by-step tutorial for the starting deck would really get the ball rolling quickly, and I think you can imagine the consequences of the other cards once you get the basic idea of the game.

If you've got more thoughts, on the game or on these potential fixes, please let us know!

Thank you so much for the feedback! We're planning on cleaning it up and putting at least a more polished version to itch, if not a full version in the future!

@jonmerrin Glad you liked the feedback! I just really love deck building roguelike games :) Increasing the cost of Maximum Overtime would at least not make it not immediately useful and you would need to build around it. But since you can pick additional turn time it's still quite busted. I think that option would need to be removed if you want to keep this card. But that would still leave the option of just removing every card from your deck which is not Maximum OVerload or increasing turn time.
As for additional feedback: It took a bit of time to understand the coloring of the ground and didn't even see the number below Justin. But since you're thinking of making a tutorial anyway, that could use some explanation.

@miltonnh25 Thanks so much for the feedback, and I'm glad you had fun!

I'm actually really proud of the system we made for creating new cards. I might make a post about it. We wanted to make an effort to get in one of each type of card we were imagining, but we actually missed a couple because of various issues or last minute bugs. For example, having cards that push characters forward/backward or left/right, or rotate a circle, etc. We only got the characters to work right when bumping into each other in the last hour, and by then I think we weren't ready with art/were in getting the final build mode.

That's actually part of our solution for melee cards. We realized when the game was going out that melee cards weren't all that useful. You may notice that the actual area of effect of the melee card extends one space beyond what the picture depicts. That's because we knew that it was by far the least useful card and we wanted to do a last-second adjustment, but we didn't get to change the picture.
One card type we'd talked about included cards that pull enemies closer to you, with varying other benefits (like a lot of damage, or a stun affect, etc). That would allow you to combo enemies into getting close to you without needing to be completely overwhelmed before they start being useful.

That said, we have aspirations of more enemy variation that includes beefier, more interesting enemies. In that case, we'd hope that some of them make it closer to you, making the extremely strong melee cards a more useful safety net. One card idea I'm fond of is a melee AoE in a ring around you, dealing some damage and pushing them back two spaces. Name could be something like "Give Me Some Space-Time", idk, I don't remember if we actually came up with a name for it.

Thanks so much for the feedback!

@sibi We love roguelike deckbuilders too!

I definitely agree about Maximum Overtime + increasing turn time being an easy breaking combination. I like the idea of being able to gain additional seconds for your turn, especially if we're using cards that scale with time remaining, but definitely don't want to let it break the game. If we keep it, we could (and probably should) slow down how often you get those bonuses, or totally revisit it (maybe instead of regular time bonuses, it's a specific one-time bonus, like a relic in Slay the Spire). A lot of our systems were built with the jam in mind, wanting to make sure that people who only play for a couple of minutes can get the full experience.

Still, even 1-2 damage to everyone on screen is an incredibly strong card, especially if you get it basically every turn. If the types of enemies you face have more health as the game progresses, then maybe it won't totally break the game, especially since it's the only card you play that turn. I also think overpowered is ok overall, as long as you really need to work for it. I'm sure we'll have to play with the balance.

As for UI/noticing things, we've been getting good feedback on that. While a tutorial would definitely help, I also think there's room for improvement.

Omg yes this was soooo good! I was a little bit hesitant at first, because I didn't really think I was a card/turn based type of person, but this is executed really well in a fast paced manner, and I really think it just goes above and beyond what is required from a card game. Everything flows smoothly, doesn't feel confusing to play, and just overall is really fun. Using time as a resource really requires you to make quick decisions have fast reactions.

If I had to give you a critique, I would say that the gameplay gets a bit stale a bit too quickly (or maybe I just played for too long). After the first few rounds I understood how the game worked, and from there I had no challenges defeating the enemies. After a certain point I got to the 76 round level and just decided to quit, because quite frankly that is way too much time to play the game I felt I already mastered. Honestly though, this is probably a good problem to have, because it means that you have a good foundation for your game, and it just needs to be expanded upon.
Another thing is that some audio and visual feedback would have been nice. The time indicator in the center was super small so it was sometimes difficult to see the impact my cards were having on the timer. Some SFX like error sounds when you try to do something you can't or success sounds would have been nice.

These problems are pretty minor overall though, and you have a really fantastic game here! Congrats!

@mateu Thank you so much!!! That really means a lot!

I also appreciate the critique, and I think you're 100% right. The game can only get so difficult. We have one tougher enemy, but I think we were too stingy in how often we sent it out, I think that would've given the jam version more staying power, but I think it would have only delayed the moment when you feel like you're done with it.

One thing I think would help is more enemy diversity, and specifically more durable enemies. We tried making the difficulty scale with higher enemy spawning and more interesting arrangements of enemies, but there's a pretty low ceiling on how tough that can get. Another would be having an ending. Having an ending would give some goal to work towards, so you're not caught in some purgatory of winning forever, and I think it would help with tuning enemy difficulty.

We've gotten a few people giving feedback about the time indicator, but I think you hit on what the real issue is. I don't think anyone's trying to do the mental math of seconds left vs. cost (except to the extent that they have to so they know if they can play it), but I do think people care about the impact of playing a card on their time remaining. I wonder if showing the cost on the timer while a card is selected would help with that, so you also get an intuitive sense of what you'll have left? We have an indicator of how much of your time you've spent, why not use a similar language for showing how much something would cost?

Thank you so much for your feedback, it was really insightful! (Also congrats on your own game too. I know I commented on it already, but anyone else reading this should check it out, it was really good!)

I had a lot of fun playing this game. I'm a fan of deckbuilding games like Hearthstone, MtG and Dominion so I jumped at the chance to play a card game. It took me a while to figure out exactly what was happening, but eventually I got the hang of dragging the cards, and the way the timer turns grey to show cooldown.

I think what you achieved in the Jam is really good! As with every jam game there are improvements and extra things that could be done. For a card game, and in particular one where you have to play the cards quickly, you would need a lot of polish to make it clear what's happening, and the effect of playing your cards. But I think what you managed works well enough, and I certainly enjoyed several rounds of it!