First | Portfolio

Lets make a new game

The idea

During this summer I decided I wanted to create an easy-to-learn card game that only consists o 56 cards (That's how many cards that go on a printing sheet). The goal is to kickstart it at the end of the year and the goal of these posts is to document my progress during that time. As well as to just write about game design in general in order to learn.

I quickly teamed up with my brother (whom I created Squirrel Island with) and our friend Tobias who is an excellent artist and a board game lover.

(Some notes from my first brainstorming session.)

A blank canvas

I like to make sure it is not blank for more than a few seconds. Just getting some ideas out even if they are bad goes a long way compared to having nothing.

For this project, I knew I wanted to work under a lot of restrictions. I want the game to be played with only cards, be a short game and focus on a simple game loop.

Theme

Having a theme gives your game a flavor and done right helps the players understand the rules better. So to me, this part of game-making is one of the most important ones.

I really don't want to theme it with cats, traditional fantasy, or space since that's what 90+% of all new games have. I understand the importance of reading the trends, but I strongly believe that having a new and more unique look will be our card games' strongest hook.

(Right now we are looking into Tasmania as a potential place to explore for our theme.)

Current game idea...

During my last few weeks in school, I played a lot of Chicago. During that time I started to think about what we actually played and why we choose to play Chickago out of all games.

There is something very satisfying about drawing 5 cards and getting chances to sculpt your hand to be better, either to win ticks or to collect a certain combination for points. I also liked the idea of building your hand and then playing it against other players' hands.

So I felt exploring Chicago as a starting point was as good as any place to start.

After talking to my brother who is my co-designer on this project we came up with a few ideas on how to make the game concept more interesting and what we didn't like about Chicago.

I came up with a first prototype and tried it out with a friend of mine the next day.
These were the rules:
(Start with 3 cards in hand) Each player may discard X cards to draw X new ones. After that, all players play a card from hand facedown. Reveal the played cards. The highest number wins 2 points. Draw one card each.

Repeat this until 6 cards have been played to the table.

The cards had different abilities: when this card is faced against a "shark" it gets stronger. Or if this card gets placed next to another card of the same type you get a point.

I played around with all cards having a single effect and a strength number, the different abilities and numbers could be pretty much anything, the idea of the first playtest is just the find if the core game loop was fun. It was not. But it had potential. So back to the drawing board.

(First playtest)

Whats to come

We are three designers coming together to craft this game. Right now we do not have much, other than a burning passion for creating.

My idea with this "blog-style" is to try something new, I have no idea how this is going to go. But I'm not that afraid of failing and just wanted to share a portfolio piece in real time as I'm working on it.

The next update I'm writing will be after a 5 days-long "game-jam-style" development, that we have planned.
// Rasmus