Week 2 of the card game

This week we focused on creating the core mechanics of the game.  We decided the game will require players to spend resources in order to build structures and buildings.  The goal is to gain the most points by creating the most successful city.  Each player starts by drawing five action cards from the action deck.  These cards will be used to modify the rules and allow players to use strategy when building their city.  Each turn the player will draw an action card, gain resources, and then spend their resources to build.  There will be different types of building cards or blueprints that are available to build, which give different bonuses to players. We were unsure of how to represent the buildings.  Either as cards that could be drawn from a deck, or as tokens that are available to build at any time as long as the player has the resources.  We also decided that event cards will be played after every other turn or so.  Event cards are random and can effect everyone.  They are draw from a separate deck, and are supposed to account for random environmental effects or social events. We still need to solidify the core mechanics before making any more major advancements with the game.  However, we decided that the game would take place in the past during the middle ages or before.


 We want to incorporate player to player interaction in the game. Something like trading resources or goods.  We were thinking that action cards could help play a major role with this aspect of the game.  We still need to figure out how buildings are constructed, how to gain resources, and what the win conditions of the game are going to be.  We originally wanted to incorporate the lands that buildings were constructed on.  We wanted these lands to be represented by cards, but as of now we have taken that aspect out of the game because it would be too complicated.  Next week we will decide how many types of cards will be in the game for sure and how the players will interact with each other.

Week 1 of the Card Game

   This week kicked off our campaign of creating a unique and original card game.  Each group member had the responsibility of creating their own idea for a card game and present it to the group. One of the ideas presented includes a version of baseball using the style of the famous card game War.  Another idea was a game in which each player's goal is to build his or her own civilization. The third idea is a game in which players attempt to rob a home and collect as many valuables as possible. Each member thoroughly questioned the ideas and structures of each game to grasp a better understanding of which card game idea would prove to fit the criteria best. Through cooperative group work, we decided to put our efforts into our civilization building idea. 

   Our decision for our game was based on several factors.  The first factor was the negative aspects of the two other games. The baseball game seemed to lull players into a game in which strategic decisions were actually insignificant. The house robbing game was discarded because of its bad message of stealing from a home.  Another factor that lead to our decision was the fact that the game is based more on a player's own progression rather than setting back another player.  We as a group agreed that a game can be more inviting to players if the goal is to create the best possible environment for that player, rather than destroy another player's environment.  Yet another factor is that this game allows for each member of the group to incorporate his own creativity into the game because it is an open world style game.  There can be different actions, consequences, colors, aspects, and styles of play. 

   As of today, our game does not have a title.  We currently agree that there will be three decks to draw from with each deck having its own purpose.  The goal of the game is to acquire as many points possible by creating the best civilization possible.  All ideas and rules are not final and are subject to change as we continue in our process of the making of our game.