Death Clock - Stardance

Ship #1 Changes requested

@AlexG on Death Clock · about 1 month ago

I challenged myself with making a game for the 2026 GMTK Game Jam, and I think I did pretty good!

I have recently been obsessed with Balatro, so this is heavily Balatro inspired. Basically, it’s a deckbuilding rouge-like where cards are played around a clock. When the hand passes a card, it triggers, and the cards all have different abilities.

From making the game, I learned so much about Godot and programming systems. One thing I focused on was having tweens everywhere I could, so every little interaction with the game has a bouncy little animation. I used to never use tweens, but now I’m a certified tween-master. I also used a state machine for the cards, and the organization and simplicity of the system I created really allowed me to focus fully on the gameplay and made adding more cards much easier.

THE GAME IS MOBILE FRIENDLY!!! And there’s some pretty sick music my friend made, so play it and listen, too!

4 devlogs
19h

Try project → See source code →

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@AlexG on Death Clock · about 1 month ago

11h 39m 22s logged

It got down to the wire at the end of the jam, but i was able to get it all done! Ill try and list everything i made in the almost 12 hours here, from memory:

new card variations, (16 in total)
new art for everything
music!
title screen
game over and victory screens
balanced deadlines and quotas
show deck button
tooltips for cards
fixed a million bugs

I’m definitely going to be adding more to this game and fixing all the stuff that is slightly annoying (layering of the text).

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@AlexG on Death Clock · about 2 months ago

4h 56m 47s logged

Ok so sorry for the lack of devlogs, I was kinda rushing to get things in, with the limited time of the game jam and all. But heres a list of everything i can remember adding:

Animations for cards being picked up, placed, played, and more
day calendar which tells you which days have deadlines
quota and deadline display which tells you how much and by when you have to have
shop which restocks every deadline
fixed a whole lot of bugs with cards interacting with each other

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@AlexG on Death Clock · about 2 months ago

1h 31m 51s logged

Made the base mechanic of the game!

When you click the button, the hand spins around
when the hand hits a card, it activates, and each card does something different:
-add hour - adds the hour of the slot its on to min
-free time - adds the amount of free spaces to min
-anticipation - disables the next 2 hours and doubles the effect of the third
-rewind - brings the hand back, making it trigger the previous card again
each card has a multiplier, indicated by its color, which multiplies its effect (purple 0x, white 1x, gold 2x)

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@AlexG on Death Clock · about 2 months ago

48m 8s logged

I made the basic card placing setup and mechanics using state machines for the cards. The codes a little messy, but its for a game jam, so shhhh. Also all the assets are temporary