1. I realized that I wanted to make a solo dungeon crawler, and then also realized that I have no idea how to make a compelling solo game, so I scrapped that. Then I wanted to make a game about cats in Istanbul, but it wasn’t coming together. So I thought, hey, why not try to do a Starcraft-like in 18 cards?
It came together in abou 6 hours.
From a high level perspective, I basically just wanted something to hit some of the feels that Starcraft offers. Economic power and exponential economics. Big, overly destructive units that mess with the opponent. And something fast paced.
Then I took to a bunch of old cards and just worked on what I wanted the game to feel like. I came up with the board state / layout this way, and decided on running the stat lines cleanly across the top and bottom for quick calculation. It became a deckbuilder variant pretty quickly because I wanted that sense of building and development. The rotating Command Center card thing was half inspired by Autochess’ experience system, and half traditional upgrades in RTS.
From there, I filled in some blanks.
I opted for a small pool of hidden cards to act as a “build order”, so to speak, so there is a hidden information horizon. Something unique to 18 card games — because of the small card pool, this kind of information isn’t that random. Based on the cards they drew, a player would have a strong grasp of what is left in the 1* deck, and this creates strategic depth and a level of meta-strategy.
I split units in to 1* and 2*, just to add an exciting payoff moment for a teching player to get some big guns.
I added a bounty system. This is important. By rewarding bounties for killing enemy units, it means the Econ player doesn’t have an enormous advantage. To compensate, I made SCVs cycle back in to the deck. I really like the dynamic this creates, although the numbers need work.
Then I made a bunch of units, added stats, and types, and some cool sounding abilities. And that’s where it’s at now!
2. Do I like how it turned out? Yeah, I think it is neat. After playing with a friend a few times, it hits the right “feeling”, and that’s the hardest part to hit. It feels like a Starcraft game should — economy focused, with hidden information, but with more aggression options than you get in most card games. It also works surprisingly well with 18 cards. It creates a small unit pool to remember, so it’s fairly easy to pick up.
3. Future plans? Maybe. I have another game world I am developing, and this would be a good fit for the story it is telling. If this becomes my next project, I’d like to find a way to maybe work in three factions in 18 card sets, and maaaaybe find a way for a single player campaign to work in a tabletop experience. That’s easier said than done, though.