Welcome to M0nk3y C0d3's first devlog post. I'm Magda, the developer of this game, here to discuss the major parts of the development so far. Originally, the previous build of the game was completely in 3D (still available to sneak peak and check out) but I decided to switch over to a 2D style and draw every single asset on my own.

New Cards

Below is an example of the "card eating" mechanic seen in M0nk3y C0d3. Just a reminder of how the card eating mechanics work:

• Herbivores eat plants
• Carnivores eat herbivores
• Omnivores eat herbivores and plants
• Plants eat nothing
• Omnivores and carnivores don't eat each other

When cards eat each other, the "eaten" disappears forever and the "eater" receives a permanent boost. Boosted cards can also eat other boosted cards and keep the total boost. This is good for strategies such as trying to get rid of most of the cards you don't want, trying to get flushes (focusing on the carnivores/omnivores), and loading up stronger cards you happen to get in your hand.

For now, cards are randomly generated into your hand unlike actual poker where you have a standard deck of 52 cards. This is going to change during development as it is very easy to lose or win if you get unlucky generated cards. It is also hard to create strategy with RNG and many of your decisions start to matter.

New Characters

There are two new characters introduced to the game: "Monkey" and "Lady". Lady was chased down by Monkey and captured. She was put into a escape room where she must face the monkey in a made up animal-kingdom themed card game. Monkey is a mysterious character, possibly a monkey cyborg, whom studies Lady and each action she makes. Lady's goal is to escape the room or she'd be stuck here forever. Monkey's intentions are unknown.

Cleaned up Card Mechanics

Cards are more functional visually and mechanically now, through playtests many realized that the cards were stretching or shrinking when  placed down on the table.

Fixed UI

The UI previously was pretty messy, with each important bit of information being put into text: Hands left, Score to get to, Current score, Score you're about to play, and how many cards in your deck.

Monkey Health Bar (UI)

The monkey has now been given a health bar, to show how much is left to score to win the round. The green part is what is left to score. When you play cards, the bar becomes orange with the damage you are about to do. Red parts of the bar is already dealt damage. Screenshot showing this below.

Card Boosts (UI)

When playing specific hands in M0Nk3y C0d3 you are able to create real poker hands. Poker hands can be done with any card in the game. They will provide a 2x multiplayer, and you know you have a viable poker hand when the bar turns blue, as shown in the image above.

Dialogue System

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ANb4kzm9nqvWrSAo6LSXpVaEvSGD169h/view?usp=shari...

Above is a google drive link with a video demonstrating a dialogue system created for M0nk3y C0d3. Playing as Lady, you are able to interact with objects in the environment to trigger dialogue. This is still in development, and soon the ability to have full on conversations between characters and objects will be developed. This will allow me to begin the story and lore of the game. I wanted to create a dialogue system similar to Toby Fox's Undertale. Each character has its own unique sound and it changes with pitch as it speaks. When the character speaks, I have it make a sound for each syllable of the word it says, and change the pitch depending on how the word sounds. 

The First Puzzle

Whenever you win a round with the monkey, a "+1 Banana Icon" will show up on the top right corner of your screen (screenshot above). These bananas will allow you to complete puzzles scattered around the room (in development). Currently, you are able to feed a toy monkey this banana and it will yield you a card to add to your deck. Screenshot below of the mentioned puzzle. These puzzles are currently repeatable for a easy development experience but each puzzle will be limited to a one-time puzzle solve.

Cards in the environment 

Cards are scattered on the floor around the room and you have the ability to pick them up and add them to your deck. They are randomly generated each run.

That is all for M0nk3y C0d3's first devlog post, more developments and updates will be coming to this game soon. For now, its still in its early stages of development but soon it may become a game similar to Balatro and Inscryption combined.