CORDIAL MINUET ENSEMBLE

So,

Judge Doorman is that one player who bought in with an account of $450-$500.

You'll notice that Judge Doorman has gone to below 30$ in the Balance leaderboards, and some player named Incident Clemency mysteriously has over 500$ now.

That's where I, Incident Clemency, come into the story.

When I started playing this game about 2 weeks ago, I only put in $5.00, ONE TIME, and that's all I've ever put into the game from my own wallet. I was already top of the profit board before tonight, but now, my profit amount/ratio is #1 in the game by a LOT, at $521.28 and 1.59. Though I'm only 5th in the game by elo. I have some theories about why this gap between profit and elo exists, basically I don't take $1.00 seriously at all at this point so I get impatient with them. I also missed a lot of the tournament.

Now I have enough Minuet Cash to buy a PS4, which I would never do, but I AM gonna buy about 3 golden plated toilet seats.

Basically, it was 2 AM on New Years and I found myself repeatedly winning 100$ matches with Judge Doorman. I won the whole pot every time, with each game lasting maybe 5 minutes at most. It was a slaughter. I assume they were drunk.

They bet 10 coins (aka 10 bucks) on every turn and he always went all in with me no matter how many times I folded. Either they were drunk, or inexperienced at this game, or both.

The lesson here is that when you start playing this game, gamble $100's of dollars right away without practicing. That's the kind of high level strategic advice that players like Creature Expression would never tell your because it's TOO PRO.

I made $400 in this game today, which is quite a living wage, meaning that Cordial Minuet is officially an e-sport! Happy New Year!

I think when two high level players match up, they are going to start placing all of the lines almost 100% randomly (while keeping a sharp eye on potential patterns from their opponent) to avoid falling into each other's psychological traps.

Meaning that with two experienced players, the real skill and depth of the game involves figuring out the statistics and psychology of when to bet and fold on a given board.

However, the first tournament isn't necessarily focused on "more experienced" players matching up. And neither is the game itself, really. In a way, it's a better strategy to hunt down less experienced players, if possible, and try to figure out their patterns. Of course this could be a charade on their part, perhaps they are pretending to be bad so that you'll bet more and more...

I love this game.

You might know me as "incident clemency", #1 on the profit leader boards. I started with $5.00 and now I have over $18.00 after just 1 day of play.

Since I'm doing so well right now, I'm not going to explain my strategy in detail, but if Jason wants to know what strategy I've been using, he should feel free to e-mail me. Let's just say that my current strategy relies very heavily on the graph to the right, but I'm working on a new strategy that will take into account the numbers on the board. My goal with this experimental new strategy is to anticipate my opponents moves, which of course could be countered easily if they figure out that I'm doing it. The most important part of my strategy so far involves "knowing when to fold".

I have been a huge fan of Jason Rohrer since I played Passage in 2007, and I've played almost every game he has released. In my opinion, Cordial Minuet is BY FAR the best game Rohrer has ever made. I predict that it will do VERY well with both critics and gamers... And most of all I think that this game will Jason rich enough to buy about $1,000,000 worth of lentils. I found this game to be more addictive than Dota... Seriously, I didn't play Dota at all today because I was too busy GAMBLING! I smell a hit.

The gameplay is perfect for a gambling game. When you lose, you really feel like it's your fault. It's rare that gambling feels fair yet skill based yet luck based... and at the end of the day it's just damn fun.

Side note, the way that the "colored markers" animate and blend together is truly artistic. I've programmed many 2D games and I think he put in a ton of skill and effort to make the animations look like actual ink and paper. The main part of the presentation/UI that I wish was different would be the coins themselves. They just look too plain to me, compared to the asthetic of the game board itself. It would also be cool to see the entire menu UI redone in "ink and paper" fashion, to match the beautiful game board. A full screen mode would be nice, too.

The UI generally feels great, but one VERY SMALL change I would make would be in the case that only 2 columns are left, it would be nice if the cursors each popped in to a space automatically, so that I don't have to drag them both from the side.

I would also love to see this game come to mobile.

Side tangent:

About 4 years ago, when I was a high school senior, I messaged Jason about how I should become a game developer. He told me "If you must go to college, go for computer science. Don't go to a Game Design college because they will force you to texture Orc ankles for the rest of your life. Also, 3D games are a fad."

I ignored some of his advice, and went to RIT for Game Design and Development. Two and a half years into that program I dropped out. It wasn't a bad program at all (very similair to Software Engineering), but when I gained enough skills to become a proper indie dev, I decided to start a company (alone) making games full time. If it wasn't for developers like Jason, I would never have had the courage to start a one-man game studio... So most of all, a big thank you and good luck goes out to Jason for leading the indie community by example for nearly 10 years now. 

Let's talk about the story/mystery of the game. I sent the link/code to some of my friends and one of them asked me "are you in a cult now?" And I said "No, this is from a well know game developer, he's just pretending to be a cult (or should I say, occult). So just shut up and type in your credit card number."

The home page of Cordial Minuet is spooky, mysterious, and has some of the best writing I've seen in or around a game. The use of capital letters, along with the general tone, reminds me of Dr. Bronner's Soap labels. There are a lot of mysterious diagrams and phrases on this page that I was completely unable to decipher.

Let's look at the text on the game board. Il Mondo is Italian for "The World", where as L'Abisso is Italian for "The Abyss". These two phrases label the green and red axis of the game respectively. These phrases are relevant to Cordial Minuet's gameplay, because "The World" represents the axis from which the player interacts with the game, whereas "The Abyss" represents the axis from which your opponent interacts with the game. This could be seen as Jason's commentary on the phenomenon of players demonizing or vilifying each other... which is a dynamic that is already present in any competitive game.

In the upper left, the name "Minosons" is scrawled messily. According to demons.wikia.com, this is the name of a demon who "insures winning in all games". There is also a strange diagram in this corner which I was unable to decipher.

I went to hebrew school for 9 years, and I noticed right away that the hebrew lettering was out of order. The top axis seems to say "זוהקצע" and the left axis seems to say "חטילנס". Neither of which are Hebrew words. Perhaps it is an anagram, or crypt, or perhaps there is some numerology involved with the numbers that I'm missing.

The game's icon reads (from right to left, as Hebrew is written) "Aleph Yod" or "אי". This was strange to me, because "יא" means "eleven" in Hebrew, but "אי" doesn't seem to mean anything in modern Hebrew.  In ancient Hebrew, though, according to one source, Aleph Yod means "nothing" or "no limit"...perhaps those are the two of the fates you can expect while playing this game... you might get "nothing" yet "there's no limit to what you can earn". http://www.sacred-texts.com/oto/aba/app5.htm

The closest I felt to uncovering the game's mystery is discovering that there is an 1891 Italian novel called L'Abisso. The plot was summarized on Wikipedia as follows: "The protagonist Durtal, a mediocre author Parisian conducts an investigation of Gilles de Rais that, in the fifteenth century, was accused of raping and torturing dozens of children. These surveys exert a strange fascination for Madame Chantelouve, who soon falls in love with the writer and becomes his mistress. Fedele of Satan, she learns from him that, in Paris , continue to be celebrated of the black masses. Durtal then approaches the Satanism, conversing with his friends of occultism , d ' astrology , of spiritualism , of magic ."

Maybe there's some more clues in that novel.

Also, the game board is 6x6. And the numbers all add up to 666. LIKE THE DEVIL!? LIKE SATAN!?!? COINCIDENCE OBAMA!?

Anyways, I wish Jason and his family the very best. This game is going places, and I truly believe that Jason deserves all of the success that is going to come his way because of this game. In the name of Minoson, good luck to us all!