Hi! I'm Melon, and this is my first solo jam, and first time making a game of this kind.
My goal this jam is to make a simple collectible/trading card game and focus on the balance of it. There will be no collecting or trading, that's just the style. Ideally, I will be releasing an online playable package for OCTGN(with lots of manual cop-outs and written rules to follow, sorry, don't know the first thing about coding!), printable PDF/image files, and if I have enough time, or after the jam, possibly a Tabletop Simulator mod.
This jam's theme is change eggs, so I must note to add some Eggs to cards/card art, Egg card back, Egg objectives and/or an Egg card(probably my favourite idea). I also briefly considered naming the game after Eggs in some fashion.
On a more serious note... I have had the idea for this game for quite some time, at least in terms of some lore and visual designs. The central idea is "lots of dragons are there", but there is a little more nuance...
- There's 7 distinct flavours of dragon, with different powers associated with them. These range from ouchie super hot fire to raising the dead (potentially, it might be overpowered, hehe).
- With enough numbers, your 'lesser dragons' can band together to change into more powerful units.
...and there will be more mechanics, but these are the ones I'm not willing to give up For The Sake Of Balance! I'll see what I can come up with.
Today's progress: I was busy wrestling my testing tool of choice for the first few hours of the jam, (which started at 5pm my time) but now that's out of the way... I can sleep! First order of business tomorrow will be designing a card and play area template, then perhaps some basic stat design. I expect to spend about 3-4 days setting up with placeholders before I'm ready for testing, but I don't have a solid schedule in mind. I expect to make somewhere in the vicinity of 26-30 distinct cards, but would love to make more if I have time!
So. More tomorrow. Good luck, fellow jammers!