Born in Warsaw. Studied design at Köln International School of Design. Indie game designer now. IGF finalist. Teaching game design.
Male
Cologne, Germany
Joined on 11/19/07
Posted by Krystman - March 18th, 2020
Back on Newgrounds with my newest Pico-8 game: High Stakes - a quick game of high-tension gambling against bloodthirsty vampires.
High Stakes was created as part of the "A Game by It's Cover" Game Jam. Sadly it is not part of a tutorial series but I have recorded a longer video discussing the design process. Let me know what you think!
I discovered a piece of trivia. The rectangle Hint Token always highlights the most face-down cards that it can. Therefore, when it's not doing that, it's because the Vampire card is keeping it. Therefore, you can tell which card is the Vampire! Here's one scenario:
https://www.newgrounds.com/dump/item/18c6da5297eb6f5ada311823d48446f8
Normally, the rectangle would be at the top left corner, but it's not, being at the bottom instead. So out of the three cards that it indicates, the Vampire one is known. It's the one pulling down the rectangle. There's only one option instead of three. Disregard the 9+ in the picture, although it does prove what I'm saying.
I know that this doesn't really matter, as it's just a short game and that's that. But I figured to spill some thoughts here, just commenting about it... I didn't like the new increasing Pass cost so much, at first that is.
Regarding playing for a streak record, it just doesn't work. It takes a really long time to finally loose the streak. So if we ever loose, we surely won't start the game all over from scratch and play it all over again. We just wouldn't play the game anymore if we were to finally loose. That's why going for a streak record just doesn't work. Worst of all, even if we were to do it (although we won't), the game doesn't even record what your best streak is! As far as I know, at least. It tells you what your current streak is. But that's not your record. So unless you ACHIEVE your best streak AGAIN, it just won't tell you what your record streak is. So basically, it only shows your streak "score" while the current game with that score is undergoing. So basically, it is equivalent to not saving your score at all. Not that going for a streak record is, like I said, something that would be done in the first place.
Before I could get into problems with the increased Pass cost, I had a brilliant idea. I just won't use the Pass anymore. It doesn't matter how expensive you make passing a round, I just won't pass them. Apparently, I'm still winning. So now, the fun of the game is getting the Pass cost to numbers so large that they will go off of their screen space. That's what it has come down to. Also, another objective is to win three times, then use a super expensive Pass two times and loose more than what I earned, because the Pass is just that costly. Then I'll get asked if I want to double my earnings -- my negative earnings! I can't wait to reach that part, as there's nothing else to do here. I'm at over 10 in streak terms.
I crazily suspect that the Vampire card isn't chosen entirely at random. But it probably is! So, is the Vampire card 100% random... or does it matter where it last was? That's what made me write this, actually.
The game will remember your best streak. The exclamation point behind the streak number indicates you are on your best streak right now. Do post screenshots if you ever get the double-negative losses. Sounds like fun!
@Krystman Soon after I wrote this post my save progress got wiped out. I don't know why, but naturally being an HMTL game instead of a Flash will have something to do with it, otherwise I would have easily backed up my .sol file. Maybe the browser automatically tidied up the cache and BOOM -- everything's gone. I'm not going to play all of that all over again.
I still don't know if the Vampire is chosen 100% at random, as the last card could matter a little.
Bruh you look exactly like my old best friend lmao
ThePhenomenon
It's one of the most brilliant games that I've played, and I have played hundreds of online games. :) Of course, it's not a work like Cactus McCoy or Larry and the Gnomes, but it's pretty clever and neatly made.