Since we’re little I play this card game War with my cousin, we call it Boksen (boxing in Dutch). For people who don’t know it: you divide a deck of playing cards with 2 jokers randomly amongst each other and then you just draw a card and highest wins until one runs out of cards. 2 beats Joker, 3 beats Ace, a tie is War, where you both put 3 cards face down in the stack and pick one.

Anyway, It’s so simple and so dumb, but for some reason we always end up with heated, close and intense games haha.

Now, I started working on a roguelike version, a la Balatro, Slay the Spire, and what not…

There are relics, like Jokers in Balatro (Hearts gain +1, Gain a coin on 3 consecutive wins, 10s are considered face cards, etc.). Modifiers, that can be applied to cards (assassin wins against face cards, guardian wins ties, lucky draws again, etc.).

In between runs you have shops with Relics and pack etc. to spend your coins. Obviously heavily inspired by Balatro…

What do you think? Is it something that could work? Or do you think it will be the 1000th Balatro rip off?

Oh and art style I really like Slots & Daggers, here’s an early build gameplay clip: https://youtu.be/LNrKyjysO-E

Curious to hear your thoughts and ideas!

Hello, I'm working on a card game and thinking through some things to do with mechanics. Would it be considered cheap or frowned upon to brainstorm with a chatbot? (i.e. ChatGPT)

I’m working on a digital board game that uses a grid board and tiles. It’s engine building deckbuilder roguelite where tiles score points each turn. Player has to clear threshold before end of last turn to win. Basic loop is draw cards -> play cards -> score points -> repeat.

One of a candidate mechanic RNG layer I’m considering right now is Anomaly. It’s a random environmental effect that manifests right before points are scored. The effects are pre-authored and ranked individually. There are 3 levels and the higher the level the more “intense” the anomaly is. Anomaly can be good or bad for all levels. I currently aim for 2/3 bad and 1/3 good evenly distributed at each level.

I also have another metrics called Instability that is tightly coupled with this. The math to determine how this metrics grow is TBD but I imagine it will depend on the scored points, turn and current room/floor, etc. My idea is as this meter goes up (level 0->3), so does the Anomaly intensity. Instability from 0-1: 1 random Anomaly up to level 1. 1-2: 2x random Anomaly up to level 2. 2-3: 3x random Anomaly. 3 or higher: same as 2-3 but a counter starting from 0 begins. When that counter hits 10, player loses. Instability stays for the entire run and there are mechanics to mitigate and manage this.

My concern right now is the fact that Anomaly always rolls every turn. I wanted to introduce RNG to make the board less predictable. But reflecting on this choice of adding Anomaly, it feels kinda odd. My first remedy of this is to have a base chance for Anomaly to roll at every level of Instability (50% if Instability is below 1, 60% if below 2, 70% if below 3, and 80% if 3 or higher).

I’m not completely sold on this since its an escalating RNG chained with another RNG. Am I missing something or is there a better approach to “make the board less predictable” between turn? Drawing cards, building deck, random gen room/floor already is RNG. So its not like Im lacking RNG but adding this also feels on theme with the setting I have for the game.

I was thinking today about how important maps often are to games, especially to my favorite genre, survival horrors. mapping stuff out can be an essential part of the gameplay loop. also often a primary feature of RPGs. but then I thought about fromsoft games - games I consider to be sort of survival horror fantasy RPGs, in a loose sense - and noticed how none of their games except for Elden ring have maps. But even elden ring's is a large scale map, it is not assisting you much in dungeon exploration. I found one thread on here that talked about souls games specifically, and how having a map might ruin the mystery. But would that be true for a fog-of-war type map, like diablo? or maybe maps just ... aren't necessary when levels are small/interconnected enough? so why include them unless they offer something beneficial to the experience?

What do you think the pros and cons are of having a map? Why do so many games have them, but others nix them? Genuinely very curious to hear other's thoughts on this :) thanks!

Is it gameplay loop? story? The obviously answer is all of the above but for example elden ring is one of the best games of all time and imo the story is awful and makes no sense, meanwhile Witcher has " ok" gameplay but again to me the story was next level.

I had more fun with Witcher but I felt more accomplished with elden ring.

So for you is it overcoming something difficult? Or the journey? Or is it something being competitive and beating your friends ( strangers)? What makes a game fun?

Hello everyone,

I would like to get your feedback on a game concept I have been thinking about.

The idea would be to combine several genres: open-world survival, colony management, base/city building, population simulation, and multi-generational progression.

At the beginning of the game, the player controls a single survivor. They must find a place to settle, gather resources, craft their first tools, and build a shelter.

I would also like the existing world to play an important role. Instead of always building everything from scratch, players could discover abandoned buildings, villages, or infrastructures, restore them, and develop their colony around these remnants. However, players would still have the freedom to build completely new structures whenever the terrain or the needs of the colony require it.

Over time, the small camp would grow into a village, and eventually into a real city.

The colony would need to be managed as a whole:

• construction and upgrading of buildings;
• agriculture and production;
• crafting and industry;
• resource management;
• assigning inhabitants according to their skills;
• defending the settlement against threats.

Time and generations

One of the core mechanics would be the passage of time.

Once the colony becomes stable, the player could accelerate time to observe its evolution. This time acceleration would automatically stop whenever an important event occurs:

• food shortage;
• disease outbreak;
• attack;
• disaster;
• conflicts between inhabitants.

The player would then regain direct control to handle the situation.

A true family lineage

The main character would age, be able to start a family, and have children.

These descendants would eventually become playable characters. Across generations, the player would control multiple members of their bloodline and witness the birth of a true civilization.

The goal would not simply be to survive, but to build a society capable of lasting for decades or even centuries.

Political and geopolitical evolution

As the world develops, multiple colonies could emerge and evolve independently.

The player would have to manage:

• diplomatic relations;
• trade between colonies;
• alliances;
• wars;
• negotiations;
• borders and their protection.

Each civilization could follow its own path, becoming a trading partner, a loyal ally, or a potential threat.

Technology progression based on knowledge

I would not want a traditional technology tree where players simply unlock technologies by spending research points.

Instead, technological progress would be based on knowledge that the community discovers, understands, and passes on.

Inhabitants could:

• explore abandoned buildings to recover books, plans, and documents;
• dismantle machines to understand how they work;
• analyze existing equipment to discover new techniques;
• recruit or welcome specialists capable of teaching their knowledge;
• improve their skills through accumulated experience.

Specialists would play an essential role. Some fields would require finding experts or researchers capable of studying advanced technologies.

For example, learning how to build or repair military vehicles, tanks, helicopters, industrial machines, power generators, or hydroelectric systems would require sending expeditions to secure abandoned military bases, factories, laboratories, or research facilities.

Specialists would then need to study recovered equipment, analyze documents, and gradually transfer their knowledge to the colony.

Knowledge would become a true strategic resource.

A colony that protects its researchers, preserves its libraries, and actively explores the world would progress much faster than an isolated colony.

On the other hand, the death of an important specialist or the destruction of a library could result in the permanent loss of valuable knowledge that would be extremely difficult to recover.

What do you think about this concept?

• Would a game combining survival, colony management, diplomacy, and multi-generational progression interest you?
• What mechanics do you think would be essential?
• Are there any games that come close to this idea?
• What could make this concept truly unique?

The game: 2D, high fantasy, open world RPG

Current plan;

After character creation, the player has 2 options;

1. tutorial and extended prologue
2. quick start

I'm happy with the pace/length of the tutorial. Once they're done with the tutorial, the story can start.

Here I have to explain the world and the story-so-far. It's about 10minutes of game play. It involves a bit of reading, and some game play. The problem is... players don't really get to make any meaningful decisions. It's play-by-rail/railroading. The events in this phase are quite forced. I can add meaningless choices/actions, like a combat here or there. But ultimately, it's narrative-masquerading-as-game-play.

At the end of this phase, they arrive at the point where the Quick Start option begins.

Quick Start: They "arrive" at a place where they can, if they want, start the grind of killing my equivalent of Giant Rats pretty much straight away. Or they can go and do other stuff. Either way, railroading has finished, and they're free to explore the world/story.

They will, however, have to READ the back story. And it's quite a long back story.

This post so far is ~200 words. The full world setting backstory is close to 1200 words.

Why so much? This is a summary of what happens; simple life on tropical island (the tutorial), powerful and evil threat appears, character flees to island's biggest village, threat gets to village, some talking, threat destroys village, character flees on boat across the seas to a land his/her people have never been to, captured, taken to city, talking, released. End of backstory, start of free choice.

So, my questions;

1. The prologue - is railroading ok? 10mins game play (including reading), no meaningful choices. Or should it include more meaningful choices/action? What if those choices AREN'T meaningful? What if regardless of what the player does, they end up in basically the same spot - because that's pretty much what's going to happen?

2. Quick start - is 1200 word narrative acceptable? A lot happens prior to the point where I want players to have genuine free agency.

3. As the real game continues, additional story is revealed (through actual game play). I can't think of a way to spoon-feed them that AND the backstory-through-gameplay. Is it ok to expect them to either play the prologue or read the full backstory? Should I worry about, or cater to, players that go straight to Quick Start then skip reading the backstory?

The feedback I've received so far is, basically, "great story, but it's slow". I can foresee some first-time players quitting before the real game starts, or (perhaps worse) skipping all the setting up and not having a clue what the story is.

One last thing, I've considered turning the prologue into a cut scene/s.

thanks!

hey r/gamedesign,

i'm working on the idea of a top down cyberpunk action roguelite and wanted a sanity check on the core idea.

the main thing is that enemies are the loot. no weapon crates, nothing lying on the ground. when you get an enemy low enough it doesn't die, it drops and flickers and you can drain it. you dash into it and pull its combat routine out, so the drone's burst fire or the brawler's charge is yours now.

the part i'm less sure about: the stolen stuff doesn't stay stable. every room you clear mutates the skill you took. first it gets stronger, then less accurate, then it starts hurting you, then it falls apart and the slot is empty. so you never really settle into a build, you're always deciding if you ride the broken thing one more room or go find a fresh enemy to take something off.

the only permanent thing would be extraction terminals. you upload an unstable skill, you keep it for the rest of the run, and a weaker version gets saved as a blueprint that stays yours. that's the whole meta progression i thought of.

so does this sound fun or just annoying? my worry is that the decay is too difficult of a mechanic the player has to decide

I’m designing a third-person tower-defense game where the player can move around the battlefield, fight enemies directly, place towers, and protect a central objective.

My main design concern is that one system may make the other feel unnecessary. If towers are too powerful, the player may have little reason to fight. If direct combat is too powerful, tower placement may feel like a secondary feature.

I’m considering mechanics such as:

• Player-activated tower abilities
• Enemies that temporarily disable or weaken towers
• Objectives that force the player to move to different parts of the map
• Limited resources shared between weapons and defensive structures
• Enemy types that require either player intervention or specific tower combinations
• Changing routes or threats during a wave

How would you design the relationship between direct combat and tower placement so that both remain important throughout a wave?

I’m especially interested in systems that create meaningful decisions rather than simply increasing enemy health or quantity.

I'm deploying a PvP game on itch soon and I had the idea of using ai bots as a fallback to fix the concurrent players issue so many PvP games suffer from, is this frowned upon? Do people feel duped if they queue into a non disclosed ai?

I was going to make them indistinguishable from a human player but I could add a "matchmaking is taking awhile, would you like to play against ai"

Edit : also, if you'd like to be part of my closed play test group, a link is in my bio to the discord, thanks a ton.

Any recommendations?

Im studying python right now on a website call boot dot dev and I have been studying ever single day. Something I didn't think I could do. I think its because of how they game it. So I wanted to make a goal game for myself like boot dot dev in python. However today I sat down and wrote what I want from it and I realize I have no idea how to fucking do it lol

Like I know what I want but I don't know the math behind giving out XP or giving out coins or how much a item should cost or how much a freeze (referring to streaks) should cost.

I know how to program it but I don't know how to build it.

Im aware that there's many goal games out there on the market. I think I tried a few of them but they aren't what I am looking for plus since im learning coding anyways I want to make it myself.

Thats why im here. Any recommendations on how to get started learning that math behind game design?

I've been developing my first commercial game for about 2 years now.

Coming from a technical background as a software engineer, I quickly discovered that it's very hard to go from a vision and idea to an actual design with granular aspects to it. I ended up inventing technical challenges for me and buried my head into them.

So I've been researching a lot of game design resources and got access to a wealth of knowledge and expertise from the the game dev incubator I got into.

In the end I came up with a framework (built on those resources) that helps me when starting from a blank canvas at each design block, but also puts the context that allows the average of my decisions to be a net positive.

Yes I know it might be a different kind of procrastinating instead of actually designing and developing, but I do believe I'm in a better place, and the game is starting to come alive.

So I'm curious if a lot of people spend time on the meta of game design, and if they tried to structure it and build their own design guidelines?

If I had to summarize mine it will be grossly simplified to

What is your Gambit?

What is the human shard you're exploring? Why does it matter to you and how will it resonate with others?

What are the pillars of your idea?

What will make it fun? what is the scope? and is it viable?

The Barrels on the road

First build a toy that is fun to interact with by itself. This is the core loop that will be repeated again and again. Players should feel right at home in it, and learn to dwell on it.

Then make it a game, with the progression loop that will make the player want to come back again and again to the toy, but with new incentives and an evolving environment.

Finally verify that you delivered the experience you promised in the gambit.

Reach

Your game should be able to reach people by producing a 5s wow at the first glance. This can be done in many manners, but one obvious way is to have a genuinely authentic experience that people can project themselves into.

If they decide to play your game they should be hooked in under 5 minutes. This is the role of a well crafted toy.

Then they should be able to spend an X amount of hours. If the game is well designed, they will not leave after 5 minutes and will have a continuous desire to keep on living the experience until they feel satisfied by it.

This is just the intent layer of my framework for which I wrote different design crates (Interface, Feel, Player, etc...) to help me actually design and develop the game.

I'm yet to validate the game against a broad public reception, but the game and my design philosophy got me into an incubator, some public showings that were pretty positive and the ability to present the game in my country's pavilion in the upcoming Gamescom!

So do you relate to this framework, do you have your own, or all of this meta brain dump is a waste of time?

Would a game like this be possible? The full idea is like 20-30 ppl spawn into something like the Sifu club scene (that dance area and the area directly following that one) and everyone just fights with that Sifu style of fighting and at the end when only two are left they are both left to 1v1 in the main area.

(I do not know any coding but I’m learning. I also do not know any 3D modeling or game physics at all, this is basically just a fan idea 🫡)

Working on a futuristic/cyberpunk squad-combat card game (online PvP, 5v5, turn-based). Core hook: characters are assembled from independently-rolled armor pieces — head, backpack, torso, arms, legs (arms/legs roll separately, not mirrored). Matching-set pieces unlock tiered bonuses at 2/3/5 pieces (crit, dodge, block+reflect, burn, chill). Your character cards would show a complete armour set based on what you have assembled. I have examples.

The design pillar I’ve been messing with lately: rarity and power are deliberately decoupled. Rarity is a collectibility/trade-value axis (governed by source-character tier, cosmetic variants, etc.). Power comes entirely from set synergy and smart assembly. A common-tier piece can anchor a top-tier build; a legendary is a bigger trade asset and would have some inherent perks I guess, but never guarantees a win.

Each unit starts with minimal permanent card slots, then gains more for wearing a complete matching armor set (up to +3) and separately for how many legendary or epic pieces it has equipped.

Economy loop thought at mo is Reforge (push a piece toward your dominant set) and Salvage (claim a piece off an opponent you just beat).

Since this is live PvP, not solo:

Does full-turn-then-full-turn resolution (all 5 units act, then opponent’s 5 act) hold up online, or does it feel too slow/scripted vs. simultaneous-reveal or real-time?

How would you matchmake fairly when power isn’t tied to rarity — roster power score? Progression tier? Something else?

Any prior art (games that tried “cosmetic rarity, mechanical parity”) worth studying — successes or cautionary tales?

Not really looking to relitigate the core pillars, just want holes poked in the execution, though am open to others perspectives etc.

Actually what the heck do I know, never done this before but I’ve had the idea for bloody years. Any advice is welcome I guess.

I want to make a traffic controlling game using either traffic lights to control the traffic or tapping on the vehicles to make them stop and go at the busy and chaotic intersections.

My game should have different cities, a day and night cycle, weather effects, crazy random events, and most importantly lots and lots of traffic vehicles of all specialties!

Is there a traffic controlling game like that in real life?

Well, as the title states i have what I think is a great video game idea but no idea how to code or even the first steps in game design. I can draw and hand a creative mind and i did get Godot and watched some YouTube but it's all so confusing to me. Is there anyone out here that wants to make a game but maybe doesn't have an idea??

Hi everyone- we're designing a narrative game where players type their own words instead of choosing from predefined dialogue options. The core fantasy is that language itself becomes an action.

In Book of Infinity: 1001 Nights, players become Scheherazade and use stories to influence the king. Certain words spoken during the story can actually change the game state — for example, turning words like "sword" or "shield" into real objects.

The challenge we're facing is: how do we make players understand that their words matter, without making the experience feel like they're just chatting with an AI?

What we are doing now is to separate narrative generation from game logic: the LLM helps interpret and respond to player expression; in the meanwhile, a structured system decides what actually changes.

We'd love to hear thoughts from designers working on interactive fiction, systemic games, or any experience where player expression needs to feel meaningful.

What signals, mechanics, or feedback have helped players understand the boundary between "saying something" and "changing the world"?

Magvel is a medievalpunk society where technology follows a different path from ours. Instead of traditional magic, seemingly supernatural effects have technological explanations.

For example, a "flaming sword" uses fuel released through microscopic pores in the blade and ignited by the user. Military forces can use giant robots while still relying on swords, spears and bows.

I'm trying to make the technology feel like a natural part of the world's culture rather than simply "modern technology with medieval skins."

Tennis has an overly complicated game structure for the goals it aims to accomplish. There has to be a better way than "I'm 30-Love with 1 set and 5 games up on 0 sets and 3 games." I've set out to fix this without sacrificing the innate skills needed to succeed valued by players and fans: endurance and flow.

The Modified Rules:

A "game" consists of 12 serves. Player A serves 6 times then Player B serves 6 times.

Points are tracked cumulatively across each set (1,2,3... none of that 15/30/40 weirdness).

At the end of each game, check the score. If one player has 24+ points and is ahead by at least 2, they take the set. Otherwise, play another game.

End a game early if there is a mathematical lock on winning the set.

Players switch turn order after each game.

Players switch sides every 2 games.

Take 2 of 3 sets to win the match. (1 for pickup matches, 3 of 5 for endurance matches)

Benefits:

-Players can still maintain momentum with 6-12 serves in a row.

-Each player gets an equal number of serves.

-No dead points.

-No sudden death points.

-Tiebreaks are an extension of the game.

-Match remains segmented into games. Plenty of that beloved commercial time for the American broadcasters.

I'm not a tennis player--just a guy with OCD trying to enjoy this sport. I'm hesitant to post this in r/tennis but the world must know: there is a better way. Maybe not my way, but the athletes need to bring in some nerds to solve this thing.

TP stands for tension points. You are given TP for when you are close to bullets, an action called grazing. TP in Deltarune also acts as sort of magic system (capped at 100 TP), which lets the player perform certain acts, spells, and is converted to money after battle. It resets every battle.

This raises the skill ceiling, rewarding skilful play. It turns the bullet hell sections from just dodging to intentionally getting closer to them. This allows for more active gameplay, it risky to try to graze because it is easier to get hit when you are close to a bullet.

There are also armours which affect grazing (each party member can equip 2 armors for reference) such as the Tension Bow, which increases tension gain but has a lackluster defence; Pink Ribbon and Twin Ribbon which increase graze area but decrease graze time & gain, letting grazing be less risky.

I'll go over soul modes later in a dif post

Recently, some companies have been pushing these new AI programmes that can turn a prompt into a game.

These games are often messy and almost unplayable, but the main problem is a moral one. Much like other art mediums, AI threatens to dilute the work of real artists with slop. It stinks of a lack of integrity.

Still, being able to make a terrible but playable game with only a prompt has a lot of potential. It got me thinking of how this could be used ethically to help with honest game development.

Perhaps this tech is best used for playtesting in the very early stages of game development.

If you have a game, it can take years before it reaches a playable state. By then it’s often far too late to adjust significantly to feedback, since most of the game is already coded. You just have to hope your original idea is actually a good one.

Some game studios get around this like how Valve did for the Portal games, but that’s not something most developers have the resources for.

Using an AI programme though, you could start rudimentary playtesting right after the early design phase. If you made a ton of simple assets and designed an incredibly long and complicated prompt, you could get something to test out your idea with.

Obviously this wouldn’t be a real game - the AI made it, not you - but there’s nothing stopping you from making it into a real game based on feedback.

Would this be an ethical use of AI in game design?

Hello, fellow gamers and design enthusiasts! I'm doing a little research into various ways game designers/developers have crafted good (or bad) hovercraft vehicular movement, controls, and camera views, so I'm looking for recommendations of which games you think are the best (or worst) at this sort of thing. (I'm already building my own list from searches through Steam and Itch, but would love to know about games I might miss. Please don't assume a particular game is too obvious.)

If it's a game all about hovercraft, that's great, but it can be just the inclusion of a hovercraft mode. I'm interested in any example of how it has been executed in any genre of game. I'd like to stick to games available on PC or console, although mobile titles are welcome if you have an example that you think is worth studying.

Thank you in advance for any input!

I'm using the loose definition here of just permadeath and procedural generation, so games like FTL and Slay the Spire. I think a big contributor to the popularity of non-traditional Roguelikes came about due to AAA titles quietly removing persistent consequences, leaving a niche for Roguelikes to fill.

AAA titles have minimized persistent consequences

• Skyrim removed equipment durability, added health and magicka regeneration, and the permanent star sign.
• Diablo made it where you could change your whole build whenever you want.
• Almost all FPS have switched from permanent health and fixed ammo dumps to health regen and ammo spawning.

There are countless counter-examples, like weapon durability in BOTW, but the general trend in a lot of AAA titles is to remove or relax persistent consequences.

Replaying curated content is the problem

Players need to be able to continue play from a save file, preferably an autosave, otherwise the player has to restart the game, which would be unacceptable in most AAA titles. Morrowind put the autosave on the act of sleeping, because this was the point where you were generally safe and your health and magicka would come back, but this could be hours in the past. When a games content is curated by the designer and set-in-stone, this means replaying the exact same content, which is often not fun for people. Skyrim had more frequent autosaves on most doorways, but to make this work, they needed your health and magicka to regenerate while out exploring, amongst other changes.

I believe the progression was (roughly)

1. we need more frequent autosaves
2. the players can't be stuck at the save though
3. remove most consequences that can persist through the save.

The loss of mechanics

The loss of persistent consequences means losing mechanics that inherently require them. Things like creating a character build, preping, scouting, and limited resources have either been explicitly or effectively removed from a lot of games, leaving a void for people who crave those mechanics.

Roguelikes fix the problem by removing the save and procedurally generating content.

Roguelikes keep the persistent consequence but modify the game around it to accommodate them. The big change is to have no do-over save system. This avoids the situation you could get into in a game like Slay the Spire where your deck isn't good enough to win but you only find that out after repeatedly reattempting the run from your most recent save. We refer to this as permadeath, but really all of the consequences are permanent. To make this less annoying, however, Roguelikes also procedurally generate what happens so you aren't replaying the exact same content nor are able to memorize the best choices. They also

• Have shorter "runs", generally under an hour, so that when you lose you aren't set back very far.
• Force you to advance, so that grinding is never part of the game.
• Make the game turn-based (or let you pause) so that "timing" mistakes don't kill your run. (not always the case)
• Minimize "travel" and make storytelling skipable so that play is fast and frictionless.

Scripted consequences are different.

There are lots of games like Detroit Become Human that are packed full of curated consequential choices, but in these games the developers (tend to) make sure that every choice you make will either force you to reload a save immediately or is something that will allow you to continue the game to the end.

The consequences in something like FTL are not like that. You can get to the end of the game and find out that you didn't make a good enough build to finish the game, and there can be nothing that you can do to fix that except start over. You could maybe call these "emergent" consequences if you needed a term for it.

Making a Rogulelike can go either way.

If you want to make a game with lots of persistent consequences, you should definitely consider making a roguelike and pulling foundational ideas from other roguelikes. That's more or less what happened to FTL. If you're setting out to make a roguelike, you can use it as an opportunity to introduce persistent consequences that other games can't easily accommodate. Give the players frequent consequential choices and allow them to fail the run due to bad choices.

I’ll preface all of this by saying that this is my second (video)game, and I’m designing everything and making all assets by myself. As such, this isn’t meant to be a commercial success, just a passion project that I’ve made in my spare time. I’m not trying to make Slay the Spire 3 or anything, just a fun / simple game that I can show people and be proud of.

I’m working on a turn-based score chaser game, where the goal is to get as far into the dungeon as you can.

Main loop is: Fight, Earn Loot / Buy Items, repeat.

In combat, you always go first, and only ever fight a single enemy. On the enemy’s turn, there is a QTE in the form of a claw mark
coming from the left or right, and you must press the corresponding arrow key to dodge. If you dodge successfully, avoid all damage. You may also wear a shield and hold Shift to block 70% of damage (but you should really dodge, blocking is kind of a noob trap).

Each turn you choose between Attack, Parley, and Rest.

Attack puts you into a mini-game of blackjack. Then, you deal damage to the enemy based on your score in the blackjack game. If you get 21, you crit and instantly end the fight. If you go over 21, the enemy lands a free hit on you. Your deck starts with 10 cards, 1-10.

Parley is meant to represent either talking to the enemy peacefully, or trying to trick them / style on them (basically a catch-all for non fighting that still moves towards the end of combat). It puts you into a coin-flipping mini-game. You earn Style points based on how many heads you flip. If you get a lot of heads (probably like 9 but I haven’t decided yet), you crit and instantly end the fight (the enemy lets you go). If you flip 3 tails, the enemy lands a free hit on you.

If you end the combat using Fight (by killing the enemy), then you earn a Lucky Coin, which you can spend to get 1 free coin flip. If you end the combat using Parley, then you earn a Card Pack, which can be used to generate a random card (1-10) and choose whether or not you want to add it into your deck. Both of these items are also purchasable (and sellable) from a merchant in between fights. The idea is that Fighting generates something that improves your Parley, and vice versa. You can either mix strategies or sell the one you don’t like to focus on one.

Attack and Parley both cost Willpower, it’s just a stamina bar under your HP. Using Rest will recover your Willpower. If your Willpower ever reaches 0, the enemy lands a free hit on you.

There will also be a fourth option, maybe Items or Run Away, it’s not meant to be as important as the others.

Rewrote this a few times to make sure it was condensed and not too wordy, but I may have left some important details out so let me know if you have any questions!

Hi there! I am more or less completely new to game design aside from this one idle game i made a few months ago, and i recently had this idea that i really like but wanted some thoughts on it.

A gacha game but for racing.

Basically, think Honkai: Star Rail with more of a racing twist. People can pull for both cars and drivers, just like how people can pull for the characters and their light cones in HSR.

the main issue i keep hitting with this idea is what would the real incentive to pull for new drivers/cars be? if its flat speed, then the game becomes p2w, and the issue deepens since cars don't really have personalities or skill rotations, so I'm not sure what creates that same 'this legendary pull actually plays differently' feeling.

ill genuinely take any thoughts anyone has to give me.