MoG's Game Dev Journal

[Man_Over_Game]

Me and my best friend made video games in highschool, and we decided as adults to try something similar and see where it goes. In this case, we started working on making a Card & Dice game that incorporated the design philosophies we fell in love with over the years. He has experience in the gaming industry (programming and QA for gambling games, is an Electrical Engineer that solves most of his work problems with SQL), and I'm something like the mad scientist that sounds crazy until someone with more sense is able to translate for me. He's good with math and patience, I'm good with game design and secretly insane, so we work well together.

And what started out as a weekend hobby ended up being pretty serious. Realistically, as long as there aren't big complications in the "producing" element of things, I suspect we'll have a ready-to-sell game in about 6 months.

So I decided to share what we're doing, what we learned, and maybe talk about game philosophies to anyone that cares. Below is what's basically the entirety of our game.

The game plays in three different rotating phases (Strategy > Army > Hero > Repeat), using dice to track the player's investment into a single card/effect, and cards being flipped up/down for misdirection against your opponent.

Note that all phases are generally done “pseudo simultaneously”. Players don’t have turns, as much as “initiative” is regularly checked on players and cards to determine what order they act or resolve.

Spoiler: 1: Strategy Phase

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Essentially a setup phase. Play your cards, assign your dice, and decide what cards are turning face-up so they can attack this turn.

Spoiler: General cleanup from the last round

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• Faceup spells are discarded, facedown spells are put at the bottom of your deck.
• All dice on all non-equipment cards are returned to your reserve pool.

• Determine which player sets up first by checking their Initiative through comparing their Power (their number of dice available). In the result of a tie, players roll against each other.
• The current player may choose any number of unit cards to flip face-up.
• You may draw any number of cards, up to having 3 in hand. You can also choose to add a die to your reserve pool (effectively hurting yourself) to instead choose cards from your discard to draw and to shuffle your remaining discard with your deck for a new deck.
• You may play any number of cards from your hand after drawing. Unit cards enter facedown and vertical. Spells enter facedown and horizontal. Equipment enter faceup and vertical.
• Assign dice to your cards. Adding a die to an equipment card also requires you to discard a card from your hand for each die added. Any card that ends this phase without any dice is discarded.
• After the first player finishes this phase, the other player(s) then repeat this process.

For the latter two phases, they revolve heavily around "Engagements", which requires the acting unit to lock in combat with a defender, where one, neither, or (in rare cases) both of the units can be defeated.

Spoiler: Engagements

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• The engaging unit rolls to attack, adding any attack bonuses to their roll.
• The defending unit then rolls to defend, adding any defense bonuses to their roll.
• If the attack roll exceeds the defense roll, the defender is then Hit.
• Hit cards are discard, with assigned dice returned to their owner’s dice pool, while Hit players permanently add a die.
• If the units are still engaged, the defending player may choose to have their unit get a Counterattack during this engagement. This Exhausts the defender.
  • During a counterattack, both units roll one less die than normal for their attack/defense rolls, although you roll a minimum of 1 die for defense rolls.
  • Generally, only one counterattack can be made per Engagement.

Spoiler: 2: Army Phase

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Your unit cards spend this phase attacking other units or players.

• Check Initiative between all faceup, nonExhausted units. The unit with Initiative may do one of the following:
  • Exhaust themselves
  • Flip facedown
  • Engage a target of their choosing, whether that is a player or a unit. This Exhausts the unit.

Repeat this process for every faceup, nonnexhausted unit on the board.

Spoiler: 3: Hero Phase

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After units have acted, players may repeat a similar process using their Equipment cards.

• Check Initiative between Equipment Cards
• For the card with Initiative, its owner may choose to:
  • Exhaust the card
  • Equip the card and Engage a target. This Exhausts the equipment and removes a die from it.
    • During these engagements, the player is considered to have any stat bonuses granted by the equipment, use their reserve pool for rolling, and can make attack rolls (when otherwise they could not).
    • Equipment cards with no remaining dice on them are discarded after the engagement.

Players start with 5d6, losing whenever they would add an 11th die.
Decks only contain 12 cards. This means that, after 4 rounds, you're either out of cards, have a full board, or you're taking a Hit to get a new hand/deck.
Also, the only time a card can remain on the board with no dice is during the Strategy phase, while you're allocating where you want all of your dice to go. If a card ever runs out of dice otherwise, it's discarded.

A few key things not covered by the phase breakdown:

Spoiler: ”Power”

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The word “Power” is used to reference the number of dice on a card, or a player’s dice in their reserve pool, often used in reference to other cards/units (such as with Initiative or some spells)

Spoiler: Players can’t make attacks without Equipment

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Players can’t make Attack rolls without first Equipping an equipment card. This include Counterattacks. If a Player has Unexhausted equipment cards, they can use them during the Hero phase to initiate engagements and make attacks against units.

Spoiler: How Rolls work

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Roll all of the dice allocated to the player/card in question, keeping the highest value rolled. For each duplicate of that number, add +1. Technically, if you rolled a die lower than your highest roll, but ended with more duplicates (like getting three 4’s in a row), you may use that instead.

Spoiler: Equipment

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Equipment cards keep dice on them to represent the player’s investment in its durability. With them, player can engage units similar to units themselves, and can make attacks. What’s interesting about Equipment cards is that the player still uses their own reserve pool for the sake of their rolls. Since all dice are returned to the player’s reserve pool when the card they belong to is discarded, players will generally end up with lots of dice at the end of the round. However, Equipment also require a long-term investment to remain efficient, and don’t pay off until the end of each round (unless you’re attacked directly). They’re efficient when it comes to card advantage (since a single equipment can remove/prevent several problems), but they’re expensive with dice and board state. They get stronger the more you lose, making them intense, risky, and strong to use.
Example equipment cards:

• Boom Stick: +1 Attack. While equipped during the Hero phase, you may make an attack against the enemy cards adjacent to your engaged target, picking the order for each. Remove 1 die from me before each extra attack made this way.
• Dou-blade: +1 Attack. Making a counterattack while equipped unexhausts me.
• Slotted shield: +1 Defense. +2 Attack during Counterattacks.

Spoiler: Spells

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Spells work by having a Trigger and an Activation effect. When the Trigger occurs, its owner may Activate it by removing a die from the spell and obeying its text. Spells are facedown until the first time they are Activated.
Example Spells are things like:

• Necromancy: TRIGGER: When a unit card you control is Hit. ACTIVATE: Move a die from Necromancy and your reserve pool onto any other cards of your choosing.
• Illusionism: TRIGGER: When a unit you control is attacked by a unit with no more Power than Illusionism. ACTIVATE: Turn Illusionism into a unit with +1 DEF and -2 ATK and it becomes the attacked unit. If Illusionism survives the engagement, remove a die from it and turn it back into a spell.
• Jinx: TRIGGER: When one of your units is attacked. ACTIVATE: The attacking unit must roll higher than Jinx’s Power, or they get a penalty to their attack roll equal to Jinx’s power and Jinx loses a die.
• Heroism: TRIGGER: When one of your opponent’s units attacks one of your units with less Power. ACTIVATE: Move a die from Heroism onto your engaged unit, and that unit gains a +1 bonus to all rolls during this engagement. (This one is interesting, as it is more powerful when your opponent forces the trigger. It’s the difference between getting a bonus on just your Counterattack defense roll, or getting the bonus on both your Defense and Counterattack roll).
• Shadowstrike: TRIGGER: When one of your Facedown units uses its Protect feature. ACTIVATE: For each of my Power, your unit gets your choice of +1 Attack or Defense for this Engagement, then Enchant them.
• Dis-Enchant: TRIGGER: When an enemy card is Enchanted. ACTIVATE: Remove a die from the Activated Magic card and Enchanted card (after it has been Enchanted), then Enchant another one of your cards.

All spell triggers have to come from your opponents. Basically, your opponents have to “opt in” to letting you get value from your spell, with the first time it triggering catching your opponent by surprise.

Spoiler: Note on Facedown units

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Facedown units have a keyword called Protect, which allows them to replace one of your non-Protect units when they are initially engaged. Similar to Initiative, this requires the Protect unit to be Unexhausted, and it Exhausts the unit afterwards. This means that Facedown cards can also act as defensive tools, and you’re incentivized to attack Facedown cards, since they can’t be Protected (as they, themselves, have Protect). This creates synergy with something like Illusionism for a player that enjoys lots of Facedown cards, since you can now redirect an attack without putting a Facedown card at risk, and without revealing information to your opponent.
Thematically, Facedown units are a representation of an asset being “hidden”, separate from the main army. This is why they can interject when your target is obvious (which is why “hidden” units have Protect), and why attacking them directly means they can’t usually receive reinforcements (as Protect units can’t be Protected).

Spoiler: Keywords

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• Protect: When an opponent engages one of your units without Protect, an unexhausted unit with Protect can choose to replace the defender. This Exhausts your Protect unit.
• Ranged: Unless you are Exhausted, or engaged by a unit with Ranged, you always attack first during an engagement.
• Bloodlust: When this unit Hits a unit card, remove one die from it and unexhaust it.
• Enchant: When a spell removes a from itself die and puts it on an allied unit, mostly used for triggers and easy tracking of spell effects.
• Initiative +/- 1-3: For the sake of Initiative checks, you gain a bonus/penalty to your Power equal to the number listed.

Spoiler: Balance

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The game is balanced around most cards having a total value of +2, with most keywords being worth +1, and penalties being applied to address major synergies between stats and powers.
For example, a unit with [-2 Attack, +1 Defense and Protect], or [+1 Attack and Bloodlust], are all fairly evenly balanced. However, there are some caveats:
Attack is inherently more valuable than Defense, as Defense exists to prevent a problem, while Attack exists to remove it. The difference is, if you succeed on your Defense, you prevent a loss, but didn’t change the board state. A successful Attack prevents a Counterattack, and makes the game easier for the Attacker going forward. As a result, stacking multiple Attack-type bonuses on a single card has proven to be exceptionally strong.
For example, we tried out a +2 Attack, -2 Defense, Ranged unit. Despite having a total score of +1 (less than average), it was stronger than most things on the board. And since it didn’t have Protect, all I had to do was stick a bunch of Facedown cards to defend it each turn while it just churned out easy victories.

As a result, we’ve started looking at all Offensive and Defensive keywords and stats as using a formula where each stat/keyword in the same category is worth +0.5 more for each one you already have. For example, +1 Attack (+1), +1 Attack (+1.5), + Ranged (+1.5), -1 Defense (-1), -1 Defense (-1.5) totals to a unit with a score of +2.5, stronger than it should be. Include the fact that Offense is stronger than Defense, and that it’s hard to attack directly due to other Protect units, and it made sense why it destroyed.

Due to the math, a single +1 bonus isn’t a big deal, but a +2 almost guarantees that the opposition needs a bonus to their countering roll to actually stand a chance, with the dice not really changing that aspect as much as we originally liked.

We are looking into making special powers that incentivize stacking dice on a single target, but right now the winning strategy seems to be to flood the board with units and switching to more Equipment the more you get into the game (and card draw becomes expensive), using Spells when yours or your opponent’s strategy for a round is particularly obvious and strong.

Some examples that we have for this is to introduce some kind of “Saving Throw” mechanic, where a unit has a trigger (like “When this unit is attacked”) that requires the triggering enemy to roll a “save” (roll higher than the Power of the defender), or be “Hit”. This incentivizes both Attacker and Defender to want to stack lots of dice on fewer cards to cause/avoid a free hit that ignores bonuses. In a nutshell, it is a mechanic that states that the dice are more important than the stat bonuses. Now all I need to do is force our units to Engage somehow while stacking lots of dice on my “mage”, and I either get to attack with no risk of Counterattack, or you’ll have to invest lots of dice into your card to ensure you don’t get blown up before you get your Counterattack off.

So...yeah. That's a lot. Any questions?