This is my first project under the Scrappyard Games banner. The original inspiration was Gwent from the Witcher 3, but morphed as I made it my own and unknowingly made similar design decisions to Magic: The Gathering. The actual theme is an original idea, cropping up from an older novel I never got around to finish writing. Unlike Childish, I would receive little outside help. With only a friend to help test and a single song composed by _l3onardo as exceptions, the rest of the project was done completely by me.
From Paper to Code
The project started out initially when I bought a bunch of blank playing cards. I originally got them to try and copy Gwent cards from the Witcher 3. While having a separate version of the card game outside of the RPG, it was too different from the original for my tastes, so I wanted to make some real life ones to play with using the original rules. After doing that I realized that any card game could go on the blank cards I had, even one of my own, so I did. The initial premise was a card game using concepts from a novel I have put way on the backburner. This basically can be boiled down a card game where abilities are powered by magic crystals.
I had essentially designed most of the game in less then a week. After assembling a GDD, I used the blank cards to create a paper prototype. I wanted to make sure that the game was fun before fully committing to it as a long term project. After a few playtests, I was satisfied enough to move forward. Another advantage with the paper cards was the ability to make changes, I was able to catch and redesign a lot of the cards at this stage that were overbearing or useless, and make them more balanced overall.
As work progressed, testing led to further adjustments to the core gameplay loop. Story was added to the levels to further encourage forward progress through the levels. The tie advantage mechanic, where the playing a card gave a tie breaker token to your opponent, was added due the frequency of stalemates. And mulligans were added at the beginning to lessen the chances of a player not having enough of the right cards to fill the board.
