Carden ♥️♣️♦️♠️ A Card-Covering Puzzle Game?



It's been a while since I explored the simple physicality of cards as a play component. The success of Kigi's overlapping mechanic got me thinking about it again. I wanted to make another game that used a similar mechanic, but in a different way.

At the same time, I've always wanted to come up with some puzzle "system" that could be iterated over and over again for new puzzles. I'm thinking of things like Sudoku or Masyu. I've been playing a lot of La Boca and I liked the idea of a real-time team puzzle game that expanded to a large group. I thought I could use overlapping cards as the puzzle component somehow.

Whenever I work on a new game idea, I immediately dig into my longbox of assorted playing cards. I have about 300 standard playing cards from various cheap decks that I use to cobble together my alpha prototypes. So I just grabbed five different cards and started overlapping them, seeing what I could piece together as a game mechanic.

Here's what I came up with:

Carden
The premise is that you're planning a garden, based on specific requirements from your client. For now, you can play with a standard deck of playing cards, but I imagine this final game would use a customized deck of cards. The goal of each puzzle is to arrange a pile of cards so that only a certain number of icons are visible. (Yes, that includes icons along the corners.)

A puzzle is presented in this format
27: 5♥️ 6♣️ 2♦️ 8♠️ 1♠️

The bold number before the colon is the minimum total ranks that may be used in the solved puzzle (so you can't just grab the five of hearts, six of spades, etc.). The number before each suit is how many of those icons may be visible in the solved puzzle. It's assumed that you may only use one card of a suit in the puzzle, unless a suit appears twice. In this case, the puzzle requires two Spades cards. On one card, 8 spades should be visible while only one should be visible on the other.

Here's the solution to that Jason Paterson came up with this morning:


As an actual game, I may borrow the scoring mechanic from La Boca for now. Each player is paired with another player to jointly solve the same puzzle from the communal supply of cards. The faster they solve it, the more points they earn. Whoever has the most points wins.

I'm sure playtests will find that I have to adjust the scale of time and point values. For example, if you hit the exact required number of ranks, then you may get double points. Other variations might be something like this:

27: 5♥️♥️ 6♣️ 2♦️ 8♠️♠️

In this case, you must simply have two heart cards and two spades cards, but there is no restriction on how many icons must be visible on the individual cards. (Well, perhaps I'll impose a "1" minimum.)

I'll whip up some more puzzles for a testing in coming weeks to see if it's really something worth pursuing.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

5 Graphic Design and Typography Tips for your Card Game

Image
Chris Farrell of Illuminating Games just wrote a thorough critique of card games setting their body text to be so small that they cannot be read at arm's length, let alone across the table. Here's an excerpt, but the whole thing is worth a read for any would-be card game designers out there. (Myself included.) Break out your copy of the base set of Dominion, and look at the Chapel. This has a text box roughly 3.5cm by 4.5cm. It's got a single line of text. That line of text is 1 (one) millimeter high. 1mm! For me, it's only clearly readable at half an arm's length even in the bright light of day. (...) Compare this to a more sane game like Glory to Rome, where the font size is 2-3 times as large (text is 2mm high, keywords 3mm and usually highlighted). I can generally read Glory to Rome cards across the table, and can certainly see the important keywords. To heap insult upon injury, not only does Glory to Rome have far more legible text than Dominion it also has
Read more

Low-High Dice Game

Image
A dice game inspired by the stock market (and playing lots of Martian Dice). Roll a bunch of dice and choose which sets to keep. Choose your strategy wisely! Stuff You Need Two-to-Six PLAYERS A PENCIL and PAPER to keep score Thirteen standard six-sided DICE How to Play The shortest player takes the first turn. On your turn, first roll all thirteen dice. Several dice will have matching results. These are called SETS. (A single die result is a set, too.) You must choose a set to keep. For example, your first roll results are 111124445555 . The sets are four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, and four 5 s. After keeping a set of dice, lock them up in a row. This is called the GOOD TRACK. For example,  you could keep the set of four 1 s, one 2 , three 4 s, or four 5 s . You decide to keep the four 1 s and line them up in your good track. After keeping a set, you may end your turn or re-roll the remaining unlocked dice. When you re-roll, immediately set aside any results that ar
Read more

The Thousand-Year Game Design Challenge

Image
UPDATE: The submission period has closed and here are the entries. If you're an entrant, continue sending pics or vids of people playing your game. The first step to a game lasting a thousand years is for people to play it today. UPDATE 2: And here's the winner! To support games designed for longevity – that can be learned, played and shared for hundreds of years – we offer this challenge to any game designers, artists and imaginative people who also share this desire. Challenge Create a game. The game can be of any theme or genre you desire, but there is one restriction: You're creating a "new classic," like Chess, Tag or card games. So, create a game to be enjoyed by generations of players for a thousand years. Prize $1,000 to the winning entrant, to be announced and awarded January 1, 2012. Entry Deadline Entries must be submitted before midnight July August 31st, 2011. ( Update ) Entry Guidelines Enter by posting a comment below with a link
Read more