Worlds in Cards

About

Worlds in Cards is based on the idea that whole worlds, albeit very tiny, are contained inside cards. The player can be inside a single world at the time, but she can jump from world to world if they are adjacent and the landscape matches. If for example, a world has a ladder going down, then the world at bottom must have a ladder going up if the player wants to move from one to the other (and viceversa).

However, you can’t control the player directly. Instead the player’s character goes back and forth between the limits of the world—either a single card or a combination or cards correctly arranged that forms a "bigger" world—she is confined in. You can swap two cards on the screen that have neither an object nor a character, be it the player’s character or any other of the characters that are wandering around the level.

Even the game’s window looks like a card of sorts, althought this is more a side effect of trying to fit the game in my Android phone. However, I think it fits the theme, specially if you have a large resolution, because the window looks so tiny…

I didn’t have time to create many levels—five to be exact—, and they aren’t very challenging. I guess it takes much more than I have to make puzzles.

The music was made with Greasymonkey’s autotracker, so I don’t claim credit and I don’t think it would be fair to rate it. I tried to use a custom “autotracker” that I did sometime ago, but didn’t produce the same kind of quality. Most sound effects were made with sfxr, except for the sound that the cards do when are swapped; his one was made with a broom.

I tried, and failed miserably, to have a look-and-feel reminiscent of a Game Boy, partly because I thought that maybe my lack of artistic skills wouldn’t be that noticeable. Oh, boy… how wrong I was!

This game was my entry to the Ludum Dare 23 competition.

Jam Results