Day 1:
I've modeled and textured my card! I created a simple model in Blender, then drew a texture in PixelHeart (android app). Hand-drew a heightmap in the same app, then used Gimp to create a normalmap from it. I really like the resulting style.
I also designed the land the game is going to take place in. It's not much to look at, but I think it'll look better with some trees & building thrown in.
I've been thinking about how the cards are going to work, and came up with a few ideas.
There will be 2 types of cards, events and buildings. Event cards cause an event to occur, and then are discarded. These events can cause lasting effects. Building cards only appear once in the deck, and they are not discarded when used. Instead, the card remains active and provides some benefits until an event card causes it to be discarded.
The player starts with a limited number of cards in their hand, and a limited deck. Discarded cards go into a discard pile. If the deck runs out, the discard pile is reshuffled and placed in the deck. The player only draws cards if an Event or Effect tells the player to. If the player runs out of cards in their hand, the game is over.
Here are the cards and effects I came up with:
- (Building) Farmlands: If a Rainy Season is played while the Farmlands are active, produces an Abundant Harvest effect.
- (Building) Mines: If a Strike Gold is played while the Mines are active, produces a Precious Metals effect.
- (Building) Docks: If a Trade is played while the docks are active, draw 2 additional cards, even if no effects were consumed.
- (Building) Lumber Yard: If an active building card is discarded while the Lumber Yard is active, the player can choose to discard the Lumber Yard and re-activate the discarded building.
- (Event) Rainy Season: If played twice in a row, produces a Flood effect.
- (Event) Drought: Consumes an active Abundant Harvest effect. If played twice in a row, produces a Famine effect.
- (Event) War: Discards a random active building. If no buildings are active, it will instead discard a random card from the players hand.
- (Event) Pestilence: Discard 2 random cards from the players hand.
- (Event) Strike Gold: Produces a Gold Rush effect.
- (Event) Trade: Consume Abundant Harvest and/or Precious Metals effects. Immediately draw as many cards as turns were left on the consumed effects.
- (Event) Soothsayer: Look at the next 3 cards in the deck. Pick 1 to draw, and discard the others.
- (Event) Festival: Draw 3 cards.
- (Effect) Abundant Harvest: Lasts 2 turns. The player draws 1 card at the end of each turn.
- (Effect) Flood: Lasts 2 turns. All active buildings are disabled for the duration.
- (Effect) Gold Rush: Lasts 4 turns. Draw 1 card at the end of the turn.
- (Effect) Precious Metals: Lasts 4 turns. The player must discard and replace 1 card at the end of each turn.
- (Effect) Famine: Lasts 2 turns. Discard a random card from the players hand at the end of each turn.
I'll definitely need to balance the cards, I just made up the numbers for now. I'd love to add more cards, but I likely won't have enough time for more.