My WIP card game

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Right now, the game is very simple:

  • You get three cards in the beginning, after you play a card it refreshes its color
  • Every time you play a card you get +1 point
  • If you play the same color card two times in a row, you get +2 points instead
  • That’s literally it.

Any ideas?

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I’m assuming cards are returned to hand when played or when the hand is spent, so the player doesn’t run out.

I think the first thing to add is a way to win, and a way to lose. That’s more or less a basic requirement to meet the definition of a game :slight_smile:

A simple example might be giving the player X moves and a point threshold T; If the player gets at least T points in X moves, they win and go on to the next challenge. The challenge could be ramped up gradually by raising T / introducing more colors (the more colors, the lower the odds of getting two of the same) / reducing the number of moves / etc.

If you want to up the complexity a bit, you could introduce more card pairings - maybe cards have a color / a shape / a letter on them /… in addition to color, so a card can produce more points (match colors: +1, match letter: +X, match shape: multiply card score by Y, etc…). That would give the player more interesting decisions to make. Adding cards to the player’s hand would also give the player more choice, and thus more interesting decisions, to a point.

These are just examples, the possibilities are pretty much endless :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the idea! yeah, there isn’t really a way to win right now. I’ll update you when I add one.

Also, yeah. The cards are returned to the player’s hand when they play a card so they never run out. Maybe I could add like a limited card system, like every round you get like 15 cards and you have to get the most possible points from playing them?

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I think that’s a reasonable foundation for a puzzle game, but I suspect the optimal decisions will become fairly obvious… you’d probably some general mechanics that the player can predict, like “when a card with color C is played, a card in hand with the same color changes”, which would affect the optimal order of plays.
You could also have individual card mechanics, like “this card scores double if it was preceded by a blue card” or whatever. The objective is to make the game predictable enough to let the player plan become better, but complex and / or unpredictable enough that decision-making isn’t obvious.

Maybe you could make a Godot resource system, so you can easily swap card values / rules / etc.. I find that works for me :slight_smile:

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