Week 9 - Star Cards

Getting started was the most difficult part of this project. We decided on a Star Wars theme very early on, but the difficult part was deciding what to do with that theme. Specifically, we wanted to draw inspiration from other games we had played but also create a unique experience. We came up with ideas for face card abilities, but oftentimes the conversations went something like:

“What if we make card X do Y?”

“What about that same thing but a little different?”

“That sounds too much like Uno.”

We were definitely taking inspiration from other games, but the issue was how much inspiration was appropriate. We wanted to make the card powers as unique as possible so that the game really felt like our own. This is around the time that we had the idea for a team game. This would present its own set of challenges, but it also would distinguish our game as a unique experience.

The idea of a team game fit perfectly with the theme of Star Wars as well. Two teams, the Light-side and the Dark-side, would fight against each other. Since standard playing cards already came in two distinct colors, this was an easy fit. We were able to use the ordinality of cards in a way that supported the theme and was integral to the structure of the game (Altice, 9-10). Our game is unique in that card abilities are not only defined by rank but also color.

With this in mind, it seemed natural to theme the face card abilities with their respective team. Dark cards became punishments for your opponent while Light cards help your entire team. My favorite example of this is the two skipping cards. The Light jack and the Dark king both skip players, but they do so in different ways. The Dark king skips a single player on their turn, but the Light jack skips to the chosen player. The Dark cards punish a player while the Light cards help a player.

I expect that a similar thought process took place when Garfield was assigning characteristics to certain mana types in Magic (7). It makes sense for black magic to be afflicted with death or “anti-creature magic” because of the thematic meaning of the color. Just like in our game, the color of a card in Magic represents its place in the game’s narrative.

Having the theme tied to card abilities helped us come up with more unique concepts for the cards. After playtesting, both in and out of class, we were able to refine the cards' abilities and the structure of the game in general. We were able to build our game out of the theme and a single idea. There were still problems that need to be addressed, but now we had a framework that could address them.