Comment by jonahss
2 years ago
Yeah, I've been thinking evolving characters. Also more complex algorithms that you can't do on paper or in your head (and can't inspect).
When watching TV shows that have cool card games, like Yu-Gi-Oh, it seems like the game doesn't have rules, but instead the kids reason about the characters by looking at the pictures. Weird unexpected stuff happens all the time, I was thinking about how to implement that in the real world.
For example, imagine a vampire card that has its eyes closed. You try using it, but it doesn't do anything. But, you notice that when you play at night the eyes are open and now it's a powerful vampire!
So you can do time-based mechanics, I could add location-based mechanics. You can also make the cards do different things based on what other cards are in play.
Dwarf Fortress, the card game?
> When watching TV shows that have cool card games, like Yu-Gi-Oh, it seems like the game doesn't have rules, but instead the kids reason about the characters by looking at the pictures.
This is basically how it worked writing-wise in the original Duel Monsters series (though the characters acted like these were mostly all known effects/interactions), after that came GX where they toned down the creativity and mostly used real effects, then in Zexal and afterwards I think they stuck almost entirely to real effects with occasional exceptions.
I'll have to check out Duel Monsters, maybe can get some more inspiration. Have you ever seen Angelic Layer?
No, and to clarify I think you have seen it: Yu-Gi-Oh! is the name of the franchise and the original series that not many know about outside of the fandom, Yu-Gi-Oh! Duel Monsters is the retooling that focused on the card game and was the first one to be officially translated to English, the one where the characters acted as you describe. There's been 7 spinoffs since then, the first two of which were Yu-Gi-Oh! GX and Yu-Gi-Oh! Zexal.
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The card game in Yu-Gi-Oh had "rules as the plot demands", at least during the seasons with Yugi and Yami-Yugi.
When they released the real-world Dueling Monsters card game, they tried to keep the rules consistent with the manga/series, but changed them in places to make a more playable game. Ex.: there is an upper limit to the damage you can do with the Berserker Soul ability.
There's a huge genre of computer-only card games now, many of which implement these kind of "card evolution" mechanics.
If you're into this sort of thing, I highly recommend checking out Inscryption, it has some really fun twists on this idea.
A few people have told me I should play that game. Guess I know what I'm doing for the rest of the week :D
You should also try the new free to play game Marvel Snap. It's actually fairly good about not requiring you to pay money yet still offer some good progression and unlocks, and there's a lot of good ideas in there for cards which only really work in a digital way or with a bunch of counters (do some things randomly, or add a bunch of temporary and situational buffs to the cards, etc), while providing super fast games (like 3-5 minutes) with a tight and small deck of cards (a player's deck is only 12 cards), and every single card is unique. And you play on locations that also all have unique abilities.
I'm friends with a bunch of people in the board game industry, as well as being a game designer (with a game signed witha publisher that still hasn't been published yet after like, four years), and everyone thinks Marvel Snap is super fun and well designed (and addictive). It's the only mobile game I've really gotten into (that wasn't just a port of a physical board game) in several years.
Slay the Spire is another one to consider as well. It's a rogue-like game where you fight with cards and build up your deck based on the choices you make in the run. The cards are fairly static (they even made a board game adaptation on Kickstarter very recently), although they can all be upgraded, which makes the cards better. I play that on PC but I know it's out on mobile and Switch as well.
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Perhaps you should reach out to Prozd (suong won) if you got something solid to promote, or even discuss, he is a huge board game enthusiast.
I've enjoyed his videos :D I guess, sure I could try DM'ing him.
For sure, I hope you get some traction to your idea, it shows promise:
The thing about that is, now instead of just printing cards and some rules, interested parties now need to program at least a large portion of the game logic to make this work which increases their cost a large amount. (Not to mention that most trading card companies would not have the in-house capabilities to do that.) The thing that makes trading cards so popular for kids is that they are cheap. When I was at school the Kaiba starter deck for Yu-Gi-Oh was $30 and I got 50 cards, a mat for the game area, instructions and some art. A 2" e-ink display is like $10-15 wholesale which means for the same price (even adjusted for inflation) I'd receive maybe two cards at cost price. That would not be enough to keep 11 year old me entertained and as a parent I would not buy things that can be easily broken for my kids.
For what it's worth, the actual Yu-Gi-Oh trading card games has rules and the anime uses a very loose interpretation of those rules.
Yeah, I know. I've been trying to design it in a way to push costs down the whole time, but it's still a far cry from paper. My idea was to target $80 for a "starter kit", making it the equivalent purchase of a video game.
For interested parties needing to program, I could probably partner with them and do the development myself (or have employees do it). The real hard part is designing a game, the software to run it will be pretty basic to start with, once I write the general framework for taking turns, etc.
Could you have paper cards that have a barcode or qr code that are "activated" when placed into the console and then represented by your 2-3 E-Ink cards? Then the paper cards could be boosters/environment effects and all/some E-Ink cards are affected by them.
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All of those are existing TCG mechanics, though easier and more flexible in digital-only TCG (hearthstone, snap).
For instance in MTG day/night cycles were featured in the original werewolves (I want to say innistrad), location mechanics can be continuous effects on lands or ETBs, likewise for reaction to other cards in play.
Some of the most effective app-asssisted games I've played involved hidden knowledge. Alchemists and Mansions of Madness in particular.