This game is a submission for Game Off 2024.

READ THE FOLLOWING SECTIONS BEFORE PLAYING THE GAME

Jester's Hand is a Slay The Spire-like deckbuilder, where each card is hidden until it is played, after which it is discovered for the entire run. Card names are randomized, meaning you could find a Slash card called LOIGE on your first run, but on your second run LOIGE is a Heal card and CAVEO is the new Slash. Each card can be used both on enemies and self, meaning you could use an undiscovered card on an enemy healing them and then hitting yourself with a negative card.

HOW TO PLAY

Hold your mouse over a card's title, where you can select it. After that it  can be played by clicking either on the player or on an enemy if the energy requirement is met and if undiscovered a small popup will appear over your hand. To see what a card does when it is not in your hand, you can open the extensive deck display and look at the full deck. Above the show deck button there's also a smaller panel with all of the cards in the current deck. Each card costs energy, which can be read on the left of the screen, above the hand. When energy is 0 or you ran out of playable cards you can press "END TURN" and recharge, leaving the enemies to attack you. After all enemies are defeated, you can proceed to the next level. Skulls are combat levels, with difficulty varying from Easy, Hard and Boss; Bonfires are resting points and shops, where you can heal, sell and buy cards and artifacts. Effects gained during a fight remain between levels.

EFFECTS MANUAL

Some status effects are quite counterintuitive, so here's a small briefing:

Damage: Normal damage tries attacking the player, can be blocked by shield and can be dodged. Pure Damage is a guaranteed hit and ignores shield. Most enemies attack with both, depending on their strength.

Fire: Deals a small amount of damage until turns run out. Deals fixed damage each turn but damage can be permanently increased by applying it again and refreshing the timer.

Dodge: Chance each enemy has to dodge a normal attack. Most enemies have a natural dodge chance, even if it is very low. Applying dodge-increasing effects stacks quickly, with strength based on the starter dodge probability.

Bleeding: Deals fixed damage based on health of the creature it is applied to.

Poison: Deals 10xturns left Pure Damage. 

Shield: A "second health bar", which can be targeted by normal attacks or consumed with special cards.

Weakening: Decreases a creature's defense, making them more vulnerable.

Healing: Heals a creature, removing some status effects.

Defense: Protects from normal attacks by an amont at most as big as it's max value. Can be increased permanently or with a turn delay. 

KNOWN ISSUES

Looping back sometimes crashes the game.

There is no audio in the game.