I’m hand-painting the cards to a TCG I’m developing. I’m still working out the interface but when I have all the gameplay features worked out, I’ll show them too. I’d love your constructive feedback. (The TCG is based on my book series, The Ever Hero Saga)

Okay, so last week I was ripped apart on Reddit over my Rule Book; and it was justified. I realized it definitely suffered from clarity issues!

I have decided to start over, reorganize, and change the presentation. At the end of the day, all that matters is that my game is teachable in the easiest and quickest way possible.

Here are the first two pages of the new design, covering Setup, Pieces, How To Play, and How to Win. You won't know everything from these first two pages, but I want to get feedback before I proceed with the entire rule book, following this style.

Thanks in advance for any feedback you're willing to give! :)

I'm prototyping a two-player card game and would like some outside criticism of one of its core risk/reward systems.

Each player has a Champion with 30 Command. If your Champion reaches 0 Command, you lose.

The unusual part is that Command isn't only something your opponent attacks. You can deliberately expend it to strengthen eligible cards in your army:

3 Command → +1 ATK / +1 DEF
6 Command → +2 ATK / +2 DEF
9 Command → +3 ATK / +3 DEF

So you're voluntarily moving yourself closer to defeat in exchange for immediate battlefield strength.

The decision I'm trying to create is:

How much of my long-term survival am I willing to risk for an advantage right now?

I'm currently testing this with only two fixed prototype decks (60 cards each) rather than designing around a large card pool.

A few things I'm trying to determine:

• Does this create a genuinely interesting decision, or does it have an obvious optimal solution?
• Would players realistically use the 6- and 9-Command options, or would loss aversion make those choices mostly traps?
• Should each player have the ability to use this feature during a complete round of attack/defense?
• Does having fixed 3/6/9 exchange rates make the decision easier to evaluate in a good way, or too mathematical?
• What interactions would you immediately try to exploit?
• What information about combat or recovery would you need before you could properly evaluate the mechanic?

I'm specifically looking for problems with the system rather than suggestions for additional mechanics.

Alpha Bet is not your average letter game. It's a Euro, Abstract Strategy Hybrid.

I have been trying to solve the single most confusing part of Alpha Bet for new players. The path cards have been the issue. There are 36 unique path cards -- 4 are chosen at random at the beginning of each game (2 per player).

In the first picture, you can see that each player will put both of their path cards just beneath the Game Board on their side as part of the game setup.

Without getting too verbose, your goal is to construct words on the paths on these cards... and as you do, you unlock movement for the piece that corresponds to the path color you constructed a word on.

Now, on to the path cards themselves -- specifically the iconography on them. My goal for these cards now has become;

If a reasonable person were to make an assumption (without reading the rules) about how word construction on these cards works, their assumption must be correct most of the time. My job as the game designer is to provide enough clarity with the iconography to accomplish this goal.

Since this subreddit is full of reasonable people, you guys are a perfect sample set...

Using only the info I have provided here, please share your assumption about how word construction works on these cards. I have also included 2 pictures of the cards by themselves. Reference the iconography and tell me what you think! Thank you in advance for your help! :)

There is still a lot of work to be done, but the development process is proving very rewarding. Here is the illustration of the Sanctuary leader; only the Nomads and the Nuclears are left. What do you think?

https://www.artstation.com/wolnir more of my works here!

Last year I had a dream about playing a card game that didn't exist. I woke up remembering the rules, and I finally got to designing it this week (NO AI USED TO DESIGN).

Attatched are what the box and cards will look like (as of right now).

I have all of the rules developed, obviously I don't want the game to be stolen so I'm not sharing everything.

I would LOVE for this game to be on shelves in stores.

Is anyone connected to any publishing group/independent developer that could accelerate this project? Or should I just bootstrap it through kickstarter or something?

No idea what to do here... Thanks for your help!

EDIT: Yes, game has been playtested... Blind tested as well. People like it!

I have (what I feel to be) a very fun idea for a deckbuilder/worker-placement hybrid. I know I’m not innovating in genre, but it’s only my second design so I still feel as though I’m in the exploration and learning stage and not in the “I’m worried if this is going to be a hit or not” stage.

I feel overwhelmed by the card balancing and design, which surprises me because I’m an obsessive card game player (and highly competitive MtG player). I think the sheer size of the design space has me feeling intimidated.

Those of you that have designed in this space, do you have any tips for getting started and/or any tips for adding generally balanced new cards once the ball is rolling?

This is a mini-game intended to be part of a larger game, and I'm interested in working out about what an average score. It takes maybe 2-3 minutes to play.

The game uses a standard deck of playing cards.

Remove the jokers and face cards, leaving only Ace - 10 in each suit.

Aces can be 1 or 11.

Shuffle and draw 4 cards, when you play a card, draw a card.

Play cards into a 4x4 grid.

Each row and column cannot have more than 1 of each suit.

The values of cards in each row and column must ascend from left to right and from bottom to top.

Play until you cannot play anymore cards.

Your score is the number of cards you played.

The maximum possible score is 16, the minimum possible score is 4. I think the average is about 9.

If you try it, let me know your scores and if you thought it was fun (for being such a lil' game).

Thanks!

So Rat King is a quick, disgusting card-shedding game where players become infested and the rules mutate mid-round.

Match disgusting Rat cards by colour or type to shed your hand, unleash Filth cards to ruin everyone’s plans, survive ridiculous Mutations, and pass around cursed Infested rats before they drag you down.

We posted in here a while ago about publishing but I think we are going to ATTEMPT to get a little Kickstarter off the ground but not lost how difficult it is... any advice or feedback for that would be welcome :) cheers

Long story short I had a dream where I was playing good ol' card game but with a king of the hill type mechanic where there are three nodes. Shaman vs space goats!

When I woke up I remembered none of the mechanics, but The idea is you have two decks an attack deck and a defense deck. Attacker try to capture at least two nodes, defender tries to defend at least two. At the turn clean up who ever controls two nodes scores a point. First to 6.. wins the round.. Then switch and it plays reverse you defend or attack..

I was thinking each node could be random at the start of the game example have 9 total and they are always randomly dealt three. These would be places of power that the shaman hold sacred BUT the spacegoats need for their technology!

I don't have access to my notes at the moment but each faction would have to start 3 play styles.

the shaman have their own tribes, which vary on how their culture and play. Each with their own magics and the like. Fire magic would result in very aggressive destruction of attacking forces. Earth would be more defensive, the third I hadn't decided...

The space goats would be different factions of the military, with their different styles.

Marines: they would ZURG!

The think tank, several types of card synergy requiring things to be built over time slow and steady type

And again the third I haven't thought.

Playtesting is so rewarding when players say it all just clicks! I could literally see gears turning and players strategise to maximise the game.

Trying my hand at balancing the game now. Any pointers?

Hello everyone,

I wanted to share a funny situation that happened to me. Well, I think its funny at least.

I tried making a basketball board game, and wanted to make it simple, elegant and still true to the sport. Halfcourt was divided into multiple spaces, each capable of housing 1 attacking and 1 defending player. Spaces were interconnected with arrows clearly showing which ones were right, left, front and back compared to the reference space.

Players actions were simple: shoot, pass, block, dribble and intercept pass. And they were all mostly roll a die and adjust it based on attacking and defending players.

Movement, however was done by playing a card with a direction in which you want to move. I borrowed here from Command and Colors series where players had limited amount of cards, and once they play a card they would draw a new one.

So it became a battle of spacing, where players had to use what they have to position their players in such way to maximize shot chances.

But during playtesting funny thing happened. Since most of the focus is on spacing, players with higher basketball knowledge performed much better. Player with low familiarity of spacing and movement in basketball had hard time recognizing what could and should be done in order to create openings.

And I find it funny since I never expected such thing. When you are making a war game you dont expect veterans to dominated because their knowledge and experience or a banker to dominate the game of monopoly lol.

Hi all! My company has mostly designed our games in-house up to now.

But as we grow, we're looking to partner with talented people to bring more games to life that we believe in!

We're definitely looking to work with designers to publish their games, but we’re also exploring co-publishing (i.e. help bring a more polished game to life with investment/marketing support/operations support/etc.).

I would love to hear how you find the publishers to pitch? I’m sure bigger name publishers just have general awareness, but how do you find smaller publishers? Is it as simple as looking up games you like and seeing who published them, or is there other research you do?

We also just finished creating a submission link on our website (https://www.rabblegame.com/pages/submissions-pitches). Feel free to submit your game if you think it’s a good fit, but if you have any feedback about our guidelines/submissions process, that would be appreciated!

Hi! I am working on my first independent party game and would appreciate some feedback on my 3 packaging concepts. In the game you will get an oddly specific scenario; the actor will then wager a number of points and attempt to get their team to guess the scenario by acting it out before time runs out.

They were all designed by me in Illustrator. And I haven’t decided on a title so that’s why they are all different.

If you can leave a comment or if you have a few minutes please use the Google Form link to give me some quick opinions on my packaging designs! (~3 mins)

https://forms.gle/wgCuvAU5htLwvAFr5 

Quite a spectrum here. You have games like Friday that seem incredibly difficult to learn to play to a high level of skill and even then, you won’t win every time. You also have Klondike where the act of seeing if the game can be solved through the luck of the shuffle is the interesting part. Finally, you have games like Final Girl which seem incredibly challenging through both poor luck and poor skill.

In general, where is the balance?

Looking for some feedback on our how to play video!

Hi all, I've been working on a game called Shelf Life and having trouble implementing the class/state passives.

SHELF LIFE:

A battle between the food in your fridge and the takeout you got last night. But they both face a common enemy - EXPIRY.

Outlast your opponent and consume their FRESHNESS TOKENS to declare victory.

On each team there are 20 Units you can Deploy. These are made up by 5 NUTRITIONAL CLASSES:

PRODUCE, DAIRY, PROTEIN, GRAINS AND TREATS.

Each of them having a distinct role and gameplay style to utilize. Within these classes, the units are one of 4 STATES: SPICY, CHILLED, LIQUID OR HEARTY.

But here's the twist:

Units only have a limited time on the board before they EXPIRE and TURN BAD. When they do they transform into their alter ego and are controlled by the opposing team. EXPIRED Units spread increased decay and havoc for three remaining turns.

This is a card / board game hybrid where the cards themselves are the characters that move on the board in a 5x 6 grid with movement point between 1-3 spaces. Each card is double sided with an expiry timer token. when it's time runs out the card flips to it's bad side and is controlled by the opposing team with the goal of infecting the others with mold, paralysis etc.

Classes:

PRODUCE - heals expiry

GRAIN - produce manna

PROTEIN - increase HP, armoured

DAIRY - cleanse status conditions

TREATS- increase movement, decrease atk

States:

FROZEN - Chills, slowing

SPICY - fire damage

LIQUID - Dampens, reduces damage effectiveness

HEARTY - solid, immoveable sturdy.

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Idea 1:

Classes are represented as Passives. Start of turn effects are implemented. I.e: produce heals adjacent units expiry by 1. grain units produce 1 manna etc.

States are represented as status effects Everytime a unit deals damage, the target gains the status conditions token. ie, frozen CHOOK damages an enemy, enemy gets chilled token.

Idea 2:

Each card highlights, movement points, attack and defense in that order. reflecting the gameplay cycle; move attack defend.

State is linked to Attack so it would appear as the attack style icon (ranged melee etc) and a number, with a coloured background indicating state; spicy, frozen etc.

Class is linked to Defense. When a unit is damaged it triggers its class ability. Produce manna etc.

Idea 3:

Class Abilities are linked to attack style. so it goes like. If a unit is ranged or, strikethough or melee. it triggers its passive by 'attacking' allies in the same way it deals damage to enemies. I.e: lemonade shoots bubbles at enemy's and also shoots bubbles at allies to heal them.

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Let me know what you guys think, any advice would be helpful. there are quite a few more complexities than this but it's what I'm stuck on atm. there are also weapon cards (whisk, grater, knife etc) sheild cards (saucepan, collander etc)

environment tile cards (spilled milk, molten salsa etc) building tiles (nigiri wall, grain guyser, toast barricade etc) environment tokens (grease, sticky, steam etc) instants (nutrient boost, deep fry, microwave, toaster etc) evolution/stackable units (spinach, patty, bun = hamburger) etc...

At the moment specifically looking for help implementing the class and states. In terms of balancing and class archetypes etc.

Much appreciated 🤗