The Fool's Journey
This is a PICO-8 adaptation of The Fool's Journey created by Desmond Meraz.
Game sprites were drawn by me using MRMOTEXT tiles.
Music created by Gruber
Keyboard controls: Arrows keys as a D-pad, Z key as "square", X key as "x", Enter key to open the pause menu
I did modify the rules slightly (with apologies to the creator!), flipping sword and wand behavior, since the game makes more sense to me that way.
Game play is relatively simple: Collect swords, wands, cups, and pentacles while playing as "The Fool" on a journey to defeat the challenge cards, represented by each major arcana. The journey is over when either the Fool runs out of HP or 21 challenge cards have been defeated.
The play field consists of:
- A top row with 4 cards
- A middle row with a held wand, the Fool, and a held sword
- A bottom row with up to 3 pentacle cards and up to 3 "stored" cards
Each "adventure" requires the Fool to resolve (use, store, or discard) 3 of the 4 cards in the top row. Challenge cards are defeated through some combination of sword strength, wand strength, and Fool HP.
A sword and a wand may be "held", and three of any card can be stored in the Fool's "satchel". When held, a sword or a wand may be used to defeat challenge cards. Swords may retain some of their value after a challenge (challenge value - sword value), but wands dispel their full value when used in a challenge and are discarded.
Cups are used to heal the Fool up to 25 HP. The Fool is healed by the cup card's value.
Up to three pentacles can be in play at any time, and each pentacle in play can pay for the use of a sword, wand, or cup face card. Sword, wand, and cup face cards double the value of any unused matching suit card on the playing field. Pentacle face cards act as a regular pentacle card.
Ace cards shuffle the current top row into the deck and deals a new 4 cards.
Download
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Development log
- Binaries now availableFeb 11, 2024
Comments
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Goodness gracious, what a delightful game! I played this with an RL deck numerous times, and it's always just a fun thing to play with when I need to kill some time. I'd drop a buck on this if it ever drops on Steam just so I could play it on my Steam deck or something!
Big question though, do you think you'll ever make the variation of this with the defeated Major Arcana being able to be stored too for abilities? I dunno if you played with that variant or care for it, but it kept the game fresh for me, and I was wondering if you might ever add that to this?
If not, no worries, this is still FANTASTIC to play, and I've already saved it to my favorites to keep playing this more. Thanks again for making such a delightful thing, and I hope you have a wonderful day!
Thank you for playing and for your kind words.
You are right that rules variants would be a good addition. I think as far as this PICO-8 version goes, though, it's not likely to happen. I was already running up against the "token limit" that PICO-8 enforces. Worth exploring, though, thank you.
I think for this version the next step is ironing out the bugs, getting the UI/UX a little tighter (for lack of a better word), and then getting it on the PICO-8 BBS: https://www.lexaloffle.com/bbs/?cat=7
As for a retail version, I'd probably rebuild it in something like Unity. Lots of options. I don't know the details of selling a PICO-8 game, and it generally seems (imo) against the spirit of the whole thing. I'd also want to arrange a deal or something with the rules creator since he did most of the work!
For the Steam Deck specifically, I might be able to get it working on there with this version. I have one available to try it out at least. I know I got this running on another smaller, cheaper Linux handheld. I will investigate and report back.
I love this so much! Thank you for your efforts in creating such a lovely digital adaptation of my humble game.
Thank you for playing, and I'm very glad you enjoyed this! I found your game so fun, a real inspiration.