Flipjack
Behaviour Game Jam 2025 - Theme: If you can't see it, it doesn't exist
Flipjack is a card game inspired by Blackjack where players challenge an AI card dealer to getting closest to 21. Within a round, players can flip over the dealer's cards and negate its value, affect the dealer's current score. However, doing so can be risky as the dealer will counterflip at random one of the player's cards, affecting the player's score as well.
Our goal was to make a fully playable prototype (with a simple AI dealer) within the 48-hour constraint in Unreal Engine (Blueprints) without any programmer on the team, which we succeeded.
My Roles and Responsibilities
Programming (Unreal Blueprints)
Game Design
THE TEAM
Wen Da Lu
Tiffany Chenn
ENGINE AND SOFTWARE USED
Unreal Engine 5 (Blueprints)
Microsoft Powerpoint
MUSIC COMPOSED BY ME
ENGINE AND SOFTWARE USED
Unity
Photoshop
Paint Tool SAI
FL Studio
Early on
The first step was to figure out the core loop of our game.
Game Jam Scoping
We went into the game jam deciding to be a 2-person team with no programmers to challenge myself to prototyping a fully playable build in Unreal Engine (Blueprints) within the 48-hour time constraint.
In order to achieve this goal, we had to be cautious of our idea's scope and demands, ensuring that it would be feasible to build.
We went with the idea of implementing a simple UI-based card game, inspired by Blackjack, but with a twist including a card flipping/negation mechanic to fit the game jam theme.
From there, we outlined the following priorities for the game jam:
Must Have
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All 52 Cards, implemented in a Database so that they have a value associated to their visual number
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"Hit" input button for players to get dealt a card
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"Stand" input button for players to confirm and submit their current tally
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"Flip" double-click input on dealer's cards for players to flip and negate one of the dealer's card
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Simple AI that would counter flip one of the player's cards when they would get one of their cards flipped.
Important to Have
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UI scores (player and AI) that would update based on the card being dealt and the value associated
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Game Menu
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Quit Game Button
Nice to Have
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Nicer visuals on the UI
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Background Audio to give ambience to the game
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Crunchy sound effects when interacting with the inputs
Blueprints Implementation
Our first 24-hour consisted of laying the foundation of the game (setting up version control, Unreal Engine Version, importing free card assets and visual background elements), setting up the card database.
Furthermore, time was spend researching and implementing the base functionality of "Hit" to deal one card at a time to players and "Flip" to get the card being double clicked on to Flip. A player UI tally score was also implemented to reflect the player's current tally at all time.
Screenshot of the Blueprint for On Mouse Button Double Click Script
In the later 24-hours, the focus was on setting up a proper AI dealer with their own tally alongside their immediate counter-flip response to when the player would flip of of their cards.
Screenshot of a part of the AI counter-flip Blueprint Script
Early on
The first step was to figure out the core loop of our game.
Early on
The first step was to figure out the core loop of our game.
Upon reflecting on this game jam, one challenge I found for the implementation of this game was understanding the different elements in Unreal (Widget Blueprint to Blueprint Class) and how/where they communicate and send data between each other (example: Where should the "Flip" Blueprint Script be located?). Overall, I found Unreal to be quite logical to my coding background and this inspired me to learn more about the engine.
During the game jam, Flipjack was iterated and tested using a pack of real cards. We had come up with a potential multiplayer version of this game, which could be a future extension and challenge for us post-jam.