Devlog #1 - Connecting the Cards

So here I am, finally working on an actual game after messing around for, I don't know, 8 years? Despite my busy schedule as a university student and game modder/content creator, I really want to commit to this project. I made tons of Scratch games before, some good, many bad, but the biggest problem was that all the good ones are too similar to existing games and most of them also had many assets taken from games. That's why I want to make a real game now. A game that I can truly call my own, although I'll likely employ the help of my artist friends for the graphics and promotion since those are not my strong points.

The first step was to come up with a good game concept. I've already decided that the game would be a roguelike/roguelite deckbuilder from the start, but deciding on the core gameplay mechanic(s) took significantly longer. There are already lots of roguelike deckbuilders out there, so I wanted the game to stand out—to appeal to people so they wouldn't see it as just another boring ol' roguelike deckbuilder.
My initial idea that got me prototyping was a programming roguelike. Something in the style of Scratch where you would connect blocks. While this idea was interesting, I wasn't quite sure how to turn this into an actual game. After a bit of thinking and refining, I was lead to what will likely be my definitive concept for the game; a card game roguelike deckbuilder where the cards can be connected to form a "sentence". I liked the idea of this, and the initial draft turned out to be pretty neat in my opinion. 

Obviously the graphics are in need of a big touch-up, but I'm content with the concept I came up with. Having cards synergize with each other certainly isn't a new thing, but I think that this idea of cards being connectable would make for a refreshing new take on deckbuilding. 

I decided to use the Godot game engine and GDScript to challenge myself as a generalist, already being experienced with Unity and C#. It took a while to get used to the much less strict GDScript compared to my more commonly used languages, C# and Java. However, my experience with more loose languages like JavaScript and Python (and Scratch) made it not that difficult. I got the every part of the initial draft working without any major issues.

I'm hoping to get a playable demo out towards the end of the year. It's still a very rough draft right now, but if my schedule doesn't screw up my plans, I should be able to have an experience worth checking out by then.
For now, please enjoy this comedic parody video showing off some of the gameplay:

You can find an unedited version in the description of this video on YouTube. I'm not sure why you'd want to see that instead though, as the version above is the epitome of perfection.
You can tell I had a lot of fun making this one. Don't worry. I take the project itself much more seriously.

That's all for now. Thank you for reading. Please feel free to join my Discord Server to discuss the game and talk with me. Note that my Discord server is a bit of a mish-mash of all my projects right now, primarily game mods, but I'd be happy to make a dedicated server for my games if there's enough interest.