Play the Hand You're Dealt
A downloadable game for Windows
This game was made for the Narrascope 2020 jam.
It's a simple card game about making life decisions.
IMPORTANT: Read these instruction because they do not exist in the game and it will not be obvious how to play.
You play through a deck of cards representing the people, opportunities, and resources in your life. The game ends when all cards have been played (your life is over).
The top row represents the hand of four cards that are available for you to play. When there is only one card left in your hand, the game will deal three more to refill it.
Drag a card to the bottom row to play it: one slot represents yourself, three slots are goals that you are currently working on, and the broken heart represents the disappointment of missed opportunities.
There are three types of cards. You can right click on cards in the game to get a reminder at the top of the screen.
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Person or Fame cards are Goals: you can put them in one of your three goal slots or discard them on the broken heart (which increases your stress by the card's value). The value on a Goal card is the number of resources it requires to achieve. Each completed Goal adds one point to the appropriate score (Fame, Friends, or Lovers).
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Money, Free Time, and Love are Resources that you can devote to achieving
your goals or discard on the broken heart (which, again, increases your stress
by the card's value). Love may only be given to People, not used to achieve
Fame, and if you complete a Person with Love, you get a Lover instead of a Friend. Additionally, you can spend Free Time on yourself to lower your stress
or spend Money on yourself to increase your Wealth score.
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The deck also contains five Ability cards. These have no specified value, so you can discard them for free.
- Focus on getting the most out of a resource: increases the value of a card in your hand by 5.
- Channel your stress into achieving a Goal: decreases the cost of a goal card by your current stress. Note that it does not decrease your stress.
- Meditate lowers your stress by five. Note that, unlike free time cards, it can lower your stress below zero. This is used on yourself.
- Monetize "sells" a card: instead of getting a goal point, you get Wealth equal to the value of the card.
- Risk doubles the value of the next 3 cards dealt from the deck. This could be great if they are all Resources, or disastrous if they are all Goals. This is used on yourself.
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Thanks to Josh Grams for testing and writing the instructions.
In-Game Music:
Breaktime by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3457-breaktime
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
Status | In development |
Platforms | Windows |
Rating | Rated 5.0 out of 5 stars (1 total ratings) |
Author | StandOffSoftware |
Genre | Card Game |
Comments
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I am not typically drawn to card games, but I enjoyed this one. Even though there is no "win" or "lose" outcome, it is enjoyable to plan your strategies to maximize your outcome in all areas while minimizing your stress. I liked it.