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Author Topic: Designing a computer "deckbuilding" game  (Read 1365 times)

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WheresMyElephant

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Designing a computer "deckbuilding" game
« on: October 04, 2012, 06:18:36 pm »
+2

Is this the place to talk about designing your own games?

 I've been batting around the idea of making an online-only deck building game. There seem to be a lot of interesting possibilities and mechanics to explore without just tacking bad stuff onto the Dominion formula (or being a creative genius). A few that come to mind include:

* Huge decks, like a thousand cards, that would be impractical in a physical card game.

* Much more elaborate deck inspection and deck rearrangement options. You could have a "Spy" that tells you their current score (which might be basically impossible to track), and the amount of money left in their draw pile. You could have a card that reshuffles your draw pile to clump the Treasure together in three-card groups. A Moneylender that always appears in the same hand as Copper.

* Changing the text of a card (to add a +$1 bonus or something).

* Cards that have "accountability problems" in Dominion, like bad cards that you have to play on your turn.

Does this sound like fun to anybody? Any particular thoughts? Mechanics you'd be interested to see?
« Last Edit: October 04, 2012, 06:38:58 pm by WheresMyElephant »
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ftl

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Re: Designing a computer "deckbuilding" game
« Reply #1 on: October 04, 2012, 08:12:38 pm »
0

Definitely sounds fun!

I don't like the idea of "really huge decks". There needs to be a reason for a huge deck, and it seems like the reason should be more important than the huge deck itself. You can do it, but I don't see the point - making the deck huge just makes it harder to keep track of, and you don't want to throw in complexity just for the sake of complexity.

I do like the idea of cards being able to modify cards, or modify where cards appear in a shuffle, or stuff like that. That's a strategy space which basically can't be explored in physical cards. You can make your deck be more than just the set of cards that comprise it - maybe you can "glue" two cards together so they always appear in order, or stuff like that. Maybe make your terminals 'repel' each other! We've all wanted that...
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Archetype

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Re: Designing a computer "deckbuilding" game
« Reply #2 on: October 04, 2012, 08:16:03 pm »
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I think it would need something, besides computer-only allowed stuff to be licensed as a computer game.

Maybe, instead of money, you can 'hire' 1 person per turn, and then, when they appear in your hand 'trash' them and gain the next stage of that unit.
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DG

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Re: Designing a computer "deckbuilding" game
« Reply #3 on: October 04, 2012, 08:41:22 pm »
+1

Once you have a computer doing all the mechanics, you can actually replace a card deck with any collection that can allow new mechanics. For example, you can rename all the cards as locations/buildings and put them onto a 2D map when you shuffle (instead of a 1 dimensional card deck). Each turn you could then have a limited amount of movement to travel the 2D map and activate locations (cards) in your turn. Some locations could still be 'actions' with a limit on the number of action locations that you could activate each turn.

That's just an example of how you can immediately get something that could be different from Dominion just by getting away from the physical limitations of a Dominion card game.
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