A quick tour through card game design. From systems design to visuals and implementation. Held at A MAZE, Berlin in 2016. Audio from the presentation can be found here: https://voicerepublic.com/talks/doing-the-hindu-shuffle

1. Doing the Hindu shuffle
A tour through digital card game design

4. Overview
System Cards Decks Visuals Tech

5. System Design

6. What kind of game?
• Card as central play element
• Cards are
• Token (playing piece)
• Action
• Interface
• Exception-based design

7. Simple but Deep
• Easy to grasp
• Simple rules for card use
• Minimise non-card actions
• Add complexity through card rules
• Cards interact with one another

9. Player Actions
• What can players do?
• Play Cards
• Actions caused by cards
• Draw cards, select targets…
• Other actions?
• Attack with creatures, end turn…

10. Card Effects
• Cause one time effects
• Cause enduring effects
• Remain in play
• Have a position
• Can be a resource
• Can react and change

12. Resource Development
• Change of resources during play
• Shapes tension
• Affects deck building
• Affects balancing of cards

13. Time
• Turn-based vs. Realtime
• Consider complexity of board

15. How much Random?
• Randomness can be an equaliser
• Randomness in cards
• Randomness in decks

16. Card Design

17. Card Design
• Figure out your card aspects
• Cost
• Type
• Rules
• Consider the power curve

18. Core Cards
• Simple basic cards on which to build
• Allow you to play the game
• Help pin down the core power curve

19. Keywords
• Help with card interactions
• With other cards
• With other playing pieces
• Players, status effects…
• Keywords can help with interaction

20. Deck Design

21. Deck Building
• Requires different skills than playing
• Understanding randomness
• Seeing connections between cards
• Research (homework)
• Provides meaningful influence on game
• Opportunity to be creative

22. Decision Paralysis
• Large Sets make things difficult
• Knowledge of available cards
• Knowledge of the meta game
• Acquiring the appropriate cards

23. Deck-Size
• Depends on design
• Target play duration
• Desired predictability
• Set Size
• And on complexity of cards

24. Visual Design

25. The Board
• Visual metaphor of “table top”
• Everything relevant needs to be visible
• Complexity depends on
• Amount of cards
• Complexity of cards

26. Cards as Interface
• Cards are action indicators
• Minimise non-card elements
• Make those you have clearly visible

27. Card Layout
• Strong visual hierarchy
• Important things visible first
• Edges & Corners for overlapping
• The image on the card is important

29. Simple Visuals
• Make your animations feel physical
• Cards need a lot of artwork
• Find a style that works in volume

30. Card Text
• Quickly readable
• Easy to be misunderstood
• Use keywords to shorten your text
• Provide way to look up keywords

32. Technical Design

33. Card Objects
• Ideally somewhere easily to balance
• But complex card effects & interactions
• Our solution:
• We used scriptableObjects and a lot
of custom editor scripts
• In hindsight would probably do
differently and use either a scripting
language or a FSM system

35. Command Pattern
• Command Handler
• Cards generate a set of commands
• Based on game state
• Commands are then executed

36. Thanks! Questions? @mnerurkar
www.noprophet.com