My game, you have no right to award

Chapter 183 Depth is Fun

Having already played "Joker" once, Black Cat still remembered the game's interface. After glancing at the settings menu and finding no options to adjust, he went straight into the game.

Sure enough, just like when he tried it out at the headquarters of Megvii Games, a "Joker" card popped up and started talking to him.

After a brief introduction, the Joker card begins to teach him how to play.

Instead of frantically clicking the mouse to skip the conversations, he read them at his usual pace.

When he was trying out the game, he knew in advance that he only had 30 minutes to play, which led him to only glance at it and not study the rules described in every sentence carefully.

Black Cat's goal this time is to clear the level as quickly as possible.

He wanted to prove that his failure to complete the game in thirty minutes last time was just a minor accident.

One hour!
Black Cat's self-imposed challenge was to see if he could complete the game within an hour.

This will test both his strategy and his luck.

Whether he can do it or not, only God knows.

……

Black Cat's favorite thing is to get the right suit, and he always feels a sense of disappointment when he folds and fails to get the suit he wants.

If he collects enough, he will feel an unparalleled sense of joy.

Looking at the CRT-style game screen in front of him, with Synthwave electronic music playing in his ears, and looking at the neatly arranged cards in his hand, the colorful and varied clown cards, Black Cat pondered how he should play his cards.

After each card is played, you watch your score jump, double, multiply, and add up until it finally stops.

Whether you exceed the target score or fail to meet it, it will still bring you a sense of satisfaction.

Especially after thinking for a long time, when you play your cards and see the score you got from your ingenious hand, which just happens to exceed the goal for this level.

Furthermore, when settling the score, the money I received increased by a few dollars because of the number of cards I saved.

This feeling……

a!

As the game continued, Black Cat realized that the game "Clown Cards" was far more complex than he had imagined!

Different Joker cards represent different playstyles, and the player can increase the probability of hitting the desired card type by adding and removing cards from the shop.

He has now discovered that, in addition to this, each card can also have different "bonuses".

For example, the "Iron Card" can multiply the score of a card played by 1.5, provided that the player has this card in their hand.

Playing a "glass card" can double the multiplier, but there is a one in four chance it will break each time it is used.

It is this modification to the hand itself that allows each card to have the opportunity to play its role.

Even an insignificant card can have a decisive effect at the right time.

Besides the gameplay itself, the operation of the external economy is equally important.

For every card a player uses less in a game, they will receive more money upon completing the level.

Even if you have money outside the game and don't use it, you can still earn corresponding interest after each level is cleared.

Of course, to get these extra rewards, you must first survive.

If you cannot pass a level within the limited number of times you can play and discard cards, then the game is over.

When that time comes, there will be no need to worry about economic issues.

GAME OVER.
Therefore, how to balance long-term interests with short-term threats to survival is something every player needs to consider carefully.

In "Joker Cards," the combination of in-game card playing and out-of-game economics, along with strategic judgment, doubles the fun for players who enjoy calculating!
Of course, players who don't like precise calculations and prefer to play games intuitively won't experience this kind of enjoyment, but this design won't affect their gaming experience.

The developers of "The Clown" put a lot of effort into deck building.

In addition to what was originally in "The Joker," Zhou Kuang naturally had Qingyan Studio add a lot of their own ideas.

In order not to disrupt the original harmonious rhythm of the "Joker" game, they spent a lot of time adjusting the game's pace.

The original "Clown Card" was an independent work by one person, and the style and rhythm were all completed by that one person.

Therefore, the overall game design experience can be described as very smooth.

As a commercial studio and company, Qingyan Studio naturally follows a commercial development logic.

In terms of overall coherence, the game developed by Light Swallow Studio is definitely inferior to the original "Clown Cards".

However, there are gains and losses in everything.

The Joker card game has more content, more genres, and greater game depth than the original.

Compared to other card games, the original "Joker" was already considered to have a complex game structure, but the "Joker" developed by Light Swallow Studio is even more so!
Some people might think: Isn't it wrong? Isn't a more complex game worse?

Quite the opposite.

A more complex game simply means it's harder to learn and has a higher learning curve, but it doesn't necessarily mean the game itself is of poor quality.

In fact, the more complex a game is, the more intense the pleasure players experience after mastering it.

Therefore, this is a dimension that game developers need to measure themselves.

Should we choose a more in-depth design, or a game design that is easy for players to pick up but lacks depth?

For Lightswallow Studio, their current design might be a little too deep for a mainstream game.

However, compared to the entire game market, especially the indie game market, it's nothing.

Zhou Kuang had played a game before, a domestically produced RimWorld-themed game, and that game had a really high learning curve!
There were even foreigners who didn't understand Chinese at all, but overcame the differences in language and internet environment, and gradually learned how to play the game through translators and other software.

The end result was that the other person fell madly in love with the game.

He claimed to have played non-stop for almost a year, and in that year, the playtime displayed on his game account exceeded four figures.

More powerful than Dali, more addictive than Marivana.

After all, in addition to the learning curve of the game itself, he also overcame the language barrier.

Is there a more profound "game" than this?

A sense of accomplishment comes from overcoming difficulties, and the greater the difficulty, the stronger the sense of accomplishment.

If players can persevere and overcome all difficulties, then theoretically, an infinitely high learning cost would be the best design.

Zhou Kuang believes that the learning curve for "Clown Cards," developed by Qingyan Studio, is far less steep than that of Soulslike games, making it still accessible and easy for players.

Black Cat spent an hour trying to get through, but still couldn't get through.

The commenters were also constantly expressing their opinions, mocking Black Cat's choice.

Some were just joking, trying to annoy the streamer, giving off a primary school student vibe of bullying a classmate they like.

However, it must be said that the anonymity of the internet allows people to unleash their true nature without restraint, without caring about the opinions of others.

It is human nature to use a certain degree of "evil" to be mischievous.

Some keyboard warriors are genuinely getting impatient watching this.

In their eyes, the black cat was deliberately pretending to be stupid in order to create a good show effect.

How could anyone make such a choice?
They couldn't understand it. "We should have bought that Planet card in the shop last time."

"I told you to spend the money. We're almost outmatched, why are you still saving up?"

The problem is there's nothing good to buy, so wasting money is pointless.

"The problem is the streamer is dead, which is the most meaningless thing in all of this."

"vegetables"

"Host, could you please tell us more about your current goals?"

"Don't be upset, Black Dog, I can't beat them either, but I didn't buy the game either."

Super Black Cat wasn't upset at all; on the contrary, he felt like he was finally getting the hang of the game.

At first, he simply tried to collect the hands that scored the most points according to the rules of Texas Hold'em.

But he later discovered that the so-called score for each type of hand was actually meaningless.

The extra points gained at the beginning will become insignificant after a few rounds of gameplay.

If the game still starts with the default score, even if you play the highest-scoring hand every time, you will soon fail to reach the passing score, and it will be GAME OVER.

Therefore, to pass the game, it's less about playing your cards according to your hand type and more about building your deck based on the cards you're going to play.

No matter how weak your hand is, as long as you decide to play it, invest resources in it, and have a bit of luck, you can achieve the desired result.

Although Black Cat himself had never seen anyone else play this game, he already knew one fact in his heart.

That's the game. In extreme cases, you don't even need to consider the deck; you can win by playing all your high-ranking cards.

The black cat couldn't explain the logic; it simply "saw" this through its intuition.

Soon, the black cat felt that the game had changed in his eyes.

Some decisions that were difficult to make before are now surprisingly easy.

Fold, play, buy cards, an endless cycle.

Black Cat felt his thinking was very clear; this time, he was going to play pairs!

A pair is one of the simplest hand types.

You only need two cards with the same number to meet the requirements.

Of course, compared to other hand types, such a simple hand type naturally won't offer a very high return.

However, once Black Cat has made his decision, he will continuously invest external resources to raise the scores and multipliers of pairs until they reach an extremely exaggerated level.

He was quite lucky; the Joker card he got was quite useful for pairs.

Finally, he kept reaching his score goals, kept spending money to buy card packs, and chose the cards he needed to modify his deck, until he reached the final level.

Once he reaches the final score requirement, he can officially complete the "Joker" game!

Black Cat's mood fluctuated, but when he saw the restrictions imposed on him by the final boss, his heart sank.

Each time you play a card, disable a random Joker card.

The final level already required a high score, and now they've banned one of his random Joker cards, which is just adding insult to injury.

While it wasn't to the point where he couldn't play at all, it still made him very uncomfortable.

He only has four chances to play a card, and he can only reach his target score by getting the maximum number of points each time.

"I'm coming!"

"Stay calm"

"finished"

"Don't worry, I feel like we can pass."

The emotions of the viewers in the live chat rose and fell with the appearance of enemies on the game screen and the rapid drumbeats in the background music.

Black Cat first chooses to play it safe, folding once to look for a better hand.

With the cunning clown's effect of "adding 50 chips when playing a pair," even with pairs, Black Cat can get a decent score.

The other Joker cards are all high-multiplier Joker cards that increase the multiplier.

The goal is to maximize the score of each card played.

After all, the biggest drawback of pairs is that they don't have the consecutive multiplication that comes with a flush.

Therefore, in order to achieve the same rate of score increase, players using the pair strategy have no choice but to try to increase their score multiplier.

Having only folded once, Black Cat spotted a pair of Jacks and chose to play that pair.

His deck has been completely revamped, filled with various special high-ranking pairs, and several key high-ranking cards each have their own unique card patterns.

It looks more elegant than ordinary brands.

Indeed, they are "special cards" with added benefits.

This time, there were two special high cards, the King, which Black Cat chose to play without hesitation.

After playing these two hands, his score had exceeded half of the target score.

If the black cat's score continues to increase at this rate, he can reliably defeat the final boss enemy.

The black cat could even picture this scene in its mind.

With a smile on his lips, he saw two more special cards and played them without hesitation.

In fact, with the cards he has now, it's very difficult for him not to find a suitable pair to play.

Discarding at the very beginning of the game is one of the rare examples.

However, after the score was scored, it was less than Black Cat had expected.

This resulted in a score that wasn't even three-quarters!

This means that he must get a high score on his last chance to play a card in order to pass the level.

The black cat pondered the reasons and quickly found the culprit.

It turns out that when he played his card, he didn't see which card his opponent had randomly banned.

He played his card instinctively, which resulted in a score that did not meet expectations.

Although Black Cat doesn't remember which Joker card was banned and had the biggest impact, if he had been more careful just now, he might have been able to find a better way to play it by discarding a card once.

The black cat was somewhat annoyed, but now that it was the last resort, there was no use in regretting it.

His only remaining way to pass the game is to use his three remaining discard opportunities and one remaining play opportunity to find the optimal solution.

If he can get a high enough score, he can still achieve his goal of completing the game within two hours!

Black Cat firmly believes.

(End of this chapter)