Video Game / PsyCard

A game of PsyCard currently in progress

PsyCard is a Minesweeper-like game set in a "cozy cyberpunk dystopia" created by Ludosity. You are one of four friends freeloading it up on your rich Cyborg friend's couch. She wants you out... once in a while, you can still sleep there and since your rather enamored with this PsyCard game on TV, maybe you can do that as a hobby. Using your awesome psychic powers, which you somehow have and are, apparently, only used for playing PsyCard, you'll climb through the ranks, playing from tourney to tourney, in the hope that you'll make it to the Grand Tournament, because... you really have nothing better to do.

As mentioned above: the game is very similar to Minesweeper. You have a grid of different colored cards. (one for you and one for your opponent) You each take turns flipping card trying to collect three fruit cards while also collecting stars (which fill your Mana Meter and give you bonus points) and trying to avoid red skulls (which make you insta-lose the round). Most cards you pull will have plus-signs, small stars, and small, black skulls. These mean that one of those cards is in the general vicinity, which is where the MS similarities come in. Collect three fruit to win a round, reach the score limit first to win the game.

The game is freeware on Windows, itch.io link, and a paid version for smartphones.

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Tropes in this game include:

• After-Combat Recovery: In "Friend's Quest", Hit Points are restored to full after every battle.
• all lowercase letters: The minigame, Friend's Quest, is like this, item names, windows, Flavor Text, etc.
• Alphabetical Theme Naming: The player characters are Alf, Bees, Z, and Dea, a.k.a A, B, C and D, but twisted.
• Always Night: When Blunda appears, and says "G'morning", when "its the middle of the night", she responds that: "it always is here, isn't it.", then someone mentions "some sunlight" breaking through a few days ago.
• A Winner Is You: The ending to Friend's Quest, after defeating King Ur, is a "congratulations" window saying the number of victories, defeats, and how many steps were taken, then a selection to say "ok" or "good", both of which return the player back to the main game's start screen.
• Bait-and-Switch: At the third All Night Tournament, Phoebe talks about a sick filthy animal, and Alf, who's wearing a surgical mask, and who was previously hated by Phoebe because she assumed he was sick, which he might be, as he mentions frequent colds... But, instead, she's talking about GENEUS CORP's parrot:
  It's disgusting, that's what it is.
• Bio-Augmentation: Neo Dea is Dea after undergoing GENEUS CORP's psychic powers genetic engineering, which also gives her a beak, instead of a mouth.
• But Thou Must!: The beginning of the Friend's Quest minigame, which opens with a warning message and two options that do the same thing:
  warning!
  your 4 friends have been stolen by vagabonds!
  [ok] [good]
• Cargo Ship: From Friend's Quest, the "hot rock" and its Flavor Text:
  strangely attractive, for a rock.
• Catching Some Z's: Blunda, seen in the game announcement, says "Zzzzz...", and presumably she's sleeping, as she's wearing pajamas, which additionally have a night theme, being dark blue, with clouds and crescent moons on it.
• Cyborg: As seen in the game announcement, Friend, who appears to be a human, has a cybernetic eye and hand.
• Family Theme Naming: Bees and Wasp are siblings, both named for members of the Apocrita family of insects.
• Flavor Text: There's some for nearly every item in Friend's Quest, for example:
  • Bubble Ring:
    careful... careful... don't pop it.
  • third eye:
    a gross ring
  • luff:
    a magical loof with healing properties
• Genetic Engineering Is the New Nuke: As mentioned by Neon at the third All Night Tournament, GENEUS CORP "developed a technique to give psychic powers to anyone by genetic modification".
• Hit Points: Called HP, and they appear in Friend Quest, and are refilled after every battle, even on a loss.
• Item Crafting: In Friend's Quest, items can be melded with other items to produce new items. The mechanic is also how items are applied to the player character, melding the stat boosting items to the self. Some examples are:
  • bubbles + ring = bubble ring
  • lickystick + lickystick = hell goop
  • candy + candy = lickystick
  • eye orb + ring = third eye
  • eye orb + sword = black sword
  • hot rock + hot rock = rock candy
  • self + loaf = self-loofing
• Interchangeable Antimatter Keys: In Friend's Quest, keys disappear when used, justified as them being old and poorly made, or just magically disappearing, for the gold keys.
• Mana Points:
  • The main game has stars that are found during rounds, allowing players to use their psychic powers.
  • Friend's Quest: They're called MP, and have to be gathered during battle to cast spells.
• Marathon Level: The last tournament, the King Ludo Tournament, which has a score limit of 40, and 3 three eliminations needed to win, where the highest score to reach for any other tournament, was 30 at most.
• Mini-Game: Friend's Quest, which is another game, where a dungeon is explored, and PsyCard is how monsters are fought, and you play as Friend, instead of the other four characters who live with Friend.
• One-Letter Name: One of the playable characters is a girl named "Z".
• One-Word Title: "PsyCard" is written in CamelCase, and is actually one word, not two.
• Only One Name: Everyone:
  • Friend
  • Z
  • Alf
  • Ur
  • Bees
  • Dea
  • Saturnus
  • Fae
  • Neon
  • B-fia
  • Sofia
  • Sam
  • Aya
  • Blunda
  • Wasp
• Only One Save File: Because it's a mobile game so space is at a premium, and only used by one person. And there's progressive unlocks without any reason to time travel backwards, since replaying the game is relatively short and easy.
• Portmantitle: "PsyCard" = Psy + Card.
• Power Dyes Your Hair: Well, technically a depower. In Friend's Quest, melding the "self" with a "loaf", results in "self-loofing", with green hair, and "you feel miserable", along with a decrease in all stats by one, from base "self".
• Psychic Powers: Psychic powers are the means by which PsyCard is played — without psychic abilities, blank cards don't show any hints. Most people are tested for psychic powers in school. According to Z, being psychic isn't very useful outside of PsyCard, though strong psychics like Aya can still do things like read minds.
• Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: When Sofia is scolding B-fia, there are pauses in her speech:
  Sofia: "Who [pause] said [pause] you [pause] could [pause] speak?"
• Rare Candy: Multiple types:
  • The candies of Friend's Quest. "rock candy" and "candy" both say:
    meld with self to increase hp by 2!
  • "psycho star", which can be melded with the "self":
    known to increase one's psycho power.
  • lickystick:
    meld with self to increase mp by 1!
• Shame If Something Happened: The second line from Aya, right after saying that the second All Night Tournament is "nice", is:
  It'd be a real shame if something awful happened to it...
• Shout-Out: Mainly in Friend's Quest:
  • The Tenuously Connected Flavor Text of the Rose Ring is one to Revolutionary Girl Utena, as a reference to the Rose Signets, and "grants you the power to bring world revolution".
  • The ones that are wallpapers:
    • Card City Nights Start Screen
    • Ittle Dew Start Screen
    • Ittle Dew 2 Tiled pictures of Ittle lying on Tippsie with a skull.
• Sleepyhead: Blunda, as Bengt says she "sleeps a lot!" and "plays PsyCard in her sleep!"
• Sleepwalking: Blunda caused traffic problems by doing this, as it says in the credit sequence.
• Starter Equipment: From Friend's Quest, as it says:
  knife.
  classic starter weapon.
  +2 atk
• Stationary Enemy: Pre-existing Encounters in the Friend's Quest, the Faux First Person 3D-type Minigame. The corridors aren't wide enough to go around them, but some can be skipped.
• The Team Normal: Dea has no psychic powers, or almost none, as that was the result of the tests done during her schooling. She can focus to detect fruit cards, and reveal the hints that all other psychics see on their cards.
• Tenuously Connected Flavor Text: From Friend's Quest, the "rose ring", talking about "world revolution" when the known world's just a maze, with no system of government or anything, until the Final Boss, and the only known ruler, King Ur, is finally seen. It's primarily a Revolutionary Girl Utena reference:
  "grants you the power to bring world revolution"
• Terrified of Germs: Phoebe, who plays while covering her hands with oven mittens, and wanting a fresh deck for every round, which is how the official tournaments do it, or so she says.
• That Was Not a Dream: Blunda thinks she's dreaming, if the player defeats her in the Minor Major Tournament.
• Third Eye:
  • Ur has a red mark on their forehead in that location, and they have psychic powers.
  • Friend's Quest has a item called "third eye" that boosts MP, which is implied, in the Psycho Crystal Flavor Text, to be a measure of psychic power, instead of Mana Power, Magic Power, or any other acronym.
• Visible Silence: After Sofia says to B-fia, "Who said you could speak?", B-fia says: "..."

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