In the last two months there’s been a great deal of creative fun as I ramp up the graphic design aspect of my work. With recent inspiration and a cool new concept, I’ve started work on a new card game. The process has been both challenging and very rewarding.
Having played several card games, I began to form concepts for my own mechanic. I’d wanted to reshape and re-theme Bruce Glassco’s game (published by WizKids), Fantasy Realms, and (with plenty of material available) hit upon the Alien franchise as a theme. I changed card names to their appropriate Alien counterparts (with a few liberties), and expanded by adding more ships, worlds, characters and thematic elements.
Then, I began to realise a way to add more aspects to the game’s mechanic before hitting upon a new action I dubbed, the Wildcard. A card that can be randomly dealt and played to shake up the deck and general gameplay.
This new mechanic got me thinking about how a game could be prevented from becoming dry and predictable. By slotting in these random but rare cards, the player has the ability to make a nice gain whilst also shaking up the revealed, discarded and deck cards.
This wildcard idea became my jumping off point for the new game.
Alien franchise variant of WizKids Fantasy Realms. Please note, these designs are for experimentation and learning purposes only. A proving ground for my own game in development.
Expanding, I thought about other elements that I wanted to include. Having worked on designing and developing several complicated and heavy-weight board games, this could be my foray into something lighter in style and more simple to produce.
So next, I set about forming a design brief to help guide my process.
Design Brief Includes;
- Fantastic exotic design. The cards feel good to collect (deck-build) and play (their actions feel satisfying and rewards feel earned and exciting to implement.
- A strong deck-building function at the heart of the game.
- Plenty of flexibility in gameplay.
- Small box game with only mini tiles and tiny board that can all fit into a tiny box.
- All functions of the game around gaining and playing cards without the need for other things to clutter up proceedings.
- Icon driven cards with minimal text for quick and easy identification of cards, abilities and play options.
- A nature/fantasy theme as something different from my current sci-fi themed games.
With this challenge in mind, and the focus needed from the design brief, I will log my progress through each stage of the journey. I will look at the challenges, problems and all aspects from mechanics to design ideas and play-test progress.
I look forward to returning as I develop this project and to feedback or interest from others on this subject.
Thank you.
© JD FitzRoy 2024
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