I loved this game! I will be happily sending to anyone who needs to practice their sightreading. However, I thought I should let you know the "low hp warning" effects gave me a headache.
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Submitted the project, after a couple hours adding some more card names & parameters, as well as writing instructions and double checking the installation process for new players. Probably all changes I make will be re-wording or adding to the instructions, rather than changing core gameplay.
https://melon-pope.itch.io/dragonsnap-ccg
Advice to my future self(and any readers!):
- It's best not to include anything that needs multiplayer testing on a schedule. I got to test with other players about twice throughout the whole process
- Don't develop new hyperfixation on the jam start day
- Social involvement is really helpful! The jam Discord is a great resource.
Yeeeeah I didn't get much done. But I'm looking forward to playing the other jam games in a couple of days! Woohoo! And I hope my followers at least like the drawings (X. Next time I jam, I might sign on as artist/part of a team instead. (I wasn't expecting them to be in such demand!)
The second half of the images!
Can't believe the game jam is almost over! I'll be trying to round everything off so it's uploadable and playable for the remainder of the time, as well as refining some play instructions. Unfortunately I didn't even really get into the 2nd round of cards design - that's fine though, since it helped me lift off a concept I'd been thinking about over the past few months.
Next log will probably be the last one, thanks for tuning in.
Wah ! I haven't been able to focus on my game for a couple of days. That puts me way way behind... but I still have the better part of a week, so I'm hoping to recover!
A few days ago I polished off the card template with some free stock images & general pickiness. Today, I've been trying to finish off sketches of all the cards. I like some of them a lot more than others. Here's the first half, and then I can go back to designing more card effects. I've been alerted the appearance of the card is really what's going to sway people to using a certain kind of deck, so it must be pretty important! :P
[You may notice some weird symbols to the right of the card name. That's something that's changed slightly since the first template showing - an elemental "symbol" to match the type above the name. Once the tier 2 cards are complete, you should be able to spot one in a description, with hopefully a few more to come...]
(Log Part 3.)
Last night, I finished my first few rounds of testing! The game pacing was a bit too fast with the HP values I chose, so I'm going to increase them across the board. That way there's more chances to engage the change.
Board control should also be more relevant... I tested with the 3-row style, but I think the 4 row might be worth trying to make movement more important. The addition of the mana card also made card draws a bit more suspenseful, though I wonder if by adding a lot more cards I could replace that system? For the time being, it's here to stay, as having such a small card pool makes it easy to feel crowded...Finally, I rolled the 3-to-1 summon ratio to 2-to-1. That was, uh, mostly expected.
Some more solid rules for the player-pamphlet, with specific values I'm probably going to end up changing a lot:- Assemble a deck of any cards you like, up to 60 cards.
- Flip a coin/roll dice/etc. to determine the starting player. Starting player can summon, but cannot move or attack on their first turn.
- The goal is to get to the opposing player's end of the board and attack them directly! They have 20 HP. (In OCTGN: for now, I use a discarded mana card or something to keep track of HP, and count up from 0.)
- Draw 7 cards at the start of the game. Draw 2 cards at the start of every turn.
- You can summon up to 2 units each turn. Maximum 7 on the board.
- Once you have moved and attacked with any or all units of your choice, your turn is over.
- Unless an ability explicitly states otherwise, you cannot move past the line of an enemy unit. You must be on the same or an adjacent area to attack the enemy.
- If you are on your opponent's starting area and no enemies are in the same area, you can attack the enemy directly.
- Tier 2 summons cost both their mana cost(2) and 2 matching tier-1 units.
With revised numbers & card effects to add, I'm going to be replacing these ten-second card doodles and placeholder names, and continue working on card art until I can accost one of my friends to playtest! So since I haven't posted any images in a while, enjoy the old card drawings before I trash 'em.
[I would like to note the Red and Yellow description simply reads "A cool guy" in the placeholder iteration.]
(Log Part 1.)
First things first, I have to decide the scope and basic mechanics of the game. There's obviously the units, the meat of the game... then there's utility cards. Lots of different games have different approaches to this, and due to the timeframe, I want to keep them quite minimal. Individual "spell cards", I think might work better leave them as side-effects of units, ensuring the unit upgrade system is the core mechanic. However if I think there are certain spells that might enhance the experience, I will put them on the backburner, to determine which are best to add later in the development process.
Then there's the issue of limiting actions through a mana/energy system. I think this would vary by what kind of cards you use, so I'd like to integrate it into the deck rather than making the values baseline, (ie. energy cards) which would theoretically allow more individual variation in decks and inject more luck into the equation(fun!). I could also try a no-mana system that gives a hard limit of card summons per turn, but it sounded less fun. So, I will include basic expendable mana cards for the time being...
Each type of dragon (7 types total) has some unique characteristics which I'll use to design their cards, and those types should have utility that mesh well with other same-type units, though hopefully not to the extent that you must inevitably stick with a single type in your deck.
One of the various "lore things" I have thought about is the speed of unit types - this is often irrelevant or hard to represent in a turn-based card game, but I had quite a few ideas for play incorporating it, so I'm thinking of a two-row gameplay style, where freshly played cards need to spend a turn cooking in the back before they can come forward (unless they are exceptionally speedy dragons). The player's HP should also be located in the back, their enemy will have to "reach" the player's HP representation before being able to attack them. Alternatively, the player HP could be in the middle to tone down on this board control-type mechanic. I'm having a hard time choosing between modes, so I think I'm going to test both.
[On the second idea(right), the white line means "Do Not Cross"! Note: there's currently no upper limit of cards per row, that just depends on the size of your table. I just placed 3 each for ease of reading.]
Now I have a play area, I need to stat some cards. I have some designs in mind but for now I just wanna slap some numbers on. So, template time!
[Type/emblem = what kind of dragon is this? Tier #: determines cost. (I hope to keep this really simple with each tier no. being the same cost as its number.) Other categories, I hope, are self-explanatory.]
I have a feeling I might scrap movement as a mechanic, but for now... i'll see how it goes. Next I'm adding a base set to the game! I'll detail some of my flavour ideas next log.