digital card game design
TRANSCRIPT
Doing the Hindu shuffleA tour through digital card game design
OverviewSystem Cards Decks Visuals Tech
System Design
What kind of game?• Card as central play element
• Cards are
• Token (playing piece)
• Action
• Interface
• Exception-based design
Simple but Deep• Easy to grasp
• Simple rules for card use
• Minimise non-card actions
• Add complexity through card rules
• Cards interact with one another
Player Actions• What can players do?
• Play Cards
• Actions caused by cards
• Draw cards, select targets…
• Other actions?
• Attack with creatures, end turn…
Card Effects• Cause one time effects
• Cause enduring effects
• Remain in play
• Have a position
• Can be a resource
• Can react and change
Resource Development• Change of resources during play
• Shapes tension
• Affects deck building
• Affects balancing of cards
Time• Turn-based vs. Realtime
• Consider complexity of board
How much Random?• Randomness can be an equaliser
• Randomness in cards
• Randomness in decks
Card Design
Card Design• Figure out your card aspects
• Cost
• Type
• Rules
• Consider the power curve
Core Cards• Simple basic cards on which to build
• Allow you to play the game
• Help pin down the core power curve
Keywords• Help with card interactions
• With other cards
• With other playing pieces
• Players, status effects…
• Keywords can help with interaction
Deck Design
Deck Building• Requires different skills than playing
• Understanding randomness
• Seeing connections between cards
• Research (homework)
• Provides meaningful influence on game
• Opportunity to be creative
Decision Paralysis• Large Sets make things difficult
• Knowledge of available cards
• Knowledge of the meta game
• Acquiring the appropriate cards
Deck-Size• Depends on design
• Target play duration
• Desired predictability
• Set Size
• And on complexity of cards
Visual Design
The Board• Visual metaphor of “table top”
• Everything relevant needs to be visible
• Complexity depends on
• Amount of cards
• Complexity of cards
Cards as Interface• Cards are action indicators
• Minimise non-card elements
• Make those you have clearly visible
Card Layout• Strong visual hierarchy
• Important things visible first
• Edges & Corners for overlapping
• The image on the card is important
Simple Visuals• Make your animations feel physical
• Cards need a lot of artwork
• Find a style that works in volume
Card Text• Quickly readable
• Easy to be misunderstood
• Use keywords to shorten your text
• Provide way to look up keywords
Technical Design
Card Objects• Ideally somewhere easily to balance
• But complex card effects & interactions
• Our solution:
• We used scriptableObjects and a lot of custom editor scripts
• In hindsight would probably do differently and use either a scripting language or a FSM system
Command Pattern• Command Handler
• Cards generate a set of commands
• Based on game state
• Commands are then executed
