Scoundrel

A single-player roguelike card game built with LÖVE2D and Lua. Based on the solo card game Scoundrel, where you navigate a dungeon represented by a standard deck of playing cards.

Features

• Pixel art card sprites with an 8-bit aesthetic
• 17 GLSL shaders for card effects (dissolve, flame, hologram, foil, polychrome, etc.)
• CRT post-processing filter for a retro feel
• Animated background shader
• Undo system to revert actions
• Smooth fade transitions between screens
• Event-driven MVC architecture with an EventBus

How to Play

Goal: Clear all cards from the deck before your health reaches 0.

Rooms: Each room deals 4 cards. You must play 3 in any order — the last card carries over.

Card Types

Suit	Role	Effect
♥ Hearts	Potions	Heal by the card's value. Only one potion per room.
♦ Diamonds	Weapons	Equip to fight monsters. Power = card value.
♣ Clubs / ♠ Spades	Monsters	Strength = card value (J=11, Q=12, K=13, A=14).

Combat

• No weapon equipped: Take full monster damage.
• With weapon (no level): Take max(0, monster − weapon) damage. Weapon level becomes the monster's value.
• With weapon (has level): If monster > level, take full damage. Otherwise, take max(0, monster − weapon) damage and level becomes the monster's value.
• Barehand: Choose to take full damage instead of using your weapon. Toggle via the blade card button.

Flee

Skip a room — all 4 cards move to the bottom of the deck. You cannot flee two rooms in a row.

Controls

Input	Action
Click a card	Play that card
Click the blade	Toggle fight / barehand mode
U	Undo last action
Escape	Quit

Getting Started

Prerequisites

• LÖVE2D 11.x or later

Running the Game

# Clone the repository
git clone <repository-url>
cd Scoundrel

# Run with LÖVE
love .

On macOS you can also drag the project folder onto the LÖVE application.

Project Structure

main.lua                  — Composition root, wires all modules
src/
  Core/
    AssetManager.lua      — Centralized asset loading (textures, fonts, shaders)
    EventBus.lua          — Publish/subscribe event system
    constants.lua         — Game configuration values
    utils.lua             — Utility functions
  Controller/
    game.lua              — Game controller, processes actions via EventBus
    playerAction.lua      — Action definitions (Play, Skip, Next, Undo)
    stateStack.lua        — View state stack manager
  Model/
    card.lua              — Card (suit + value)
    deck.lua              — Deck of 52 cards with shuffle/draw
    gameState.lua         — Core game logic and state
    player.lua            — Player health and weapon/armor
    room.lua              — Current room of 4 cards
  View/
    buttonView.lua        — Clickable UI button
    cardView.lua          — Card rendering with shader effects
    deckView.lua          — Deck pile rendering
    states/
      gameView.lua        — Main gameplay screen
      endGameView.lua     — Win/lose screen
      transitionView.lua  — Fade transition overlay
lib/
  push.lua                — Resolution-independent rendering
  timer.lua               — Tweens and timers
resources/                — Sprites and fonts
shaders/                  — GLSL fragment shaders

Architecture

The codebase follows an MVC pattern with event-driven communication:

• Model — Pure game state with no knowledge of Views or Controllers.
• View — Renders state and publishes user actions to the EventBus.
• Controller — Subscribes to actions, updates the Model, and publishes state-change events back to Views.

All modules are wired together in main.lua (the composition root). See documentation.md for a detailed architectural breakdown.

Built With

• Lua — Programming language
• LÖVE2D — 2D game framework
• push — Resolution-independent rendering
• timer — Tweens and delayed calls