Blog 3: Prototyping
- The basic premise of my game is to find a card matching the two cards placed face-up at the start of the game — matching the number of the first and the suit of the second. Refer to the ruleset for further clarification:
Push your luck mechanics
Place two cards face-up.
Each player draws 5 cards.
The goal is then to find the card that matches the suit and number of the two face-up cards (for example. If the first card is a 5, and the second a club, you’re trying to find a 5 of clubs)
Each player then bets two of their cards in their hand, facedown.
Once both players have placed their bets facedown on the table, flip the cards.
The player with the higher total amount wins the turn.
The losing player then discards the two cards they placed, and takes the two cards their opponent put down into their hand.
In the event of a tie, whichever player has more of the suit of the second face-up card wins the round.
The winning player can then draw two cards.
The ultimate goal is to draw into the card matching the “number+suit” rule presented earlier in the rules.
First to three wins.
2. Play Log
Originally the game was very broken as there was little player agency. It basically boiled down to a modified version of “speed” and players didn’t really have much fun drawing cards until finding the matching card to win.
Second go around, we dropped the “speed” mechanic altogether and introduced the betting/push your luck mechanic. We didn’t have a cap on the amount of cards to be placed, nor did we have a way to keep the hands from spiraling out of control or for the losing player to maintain some sort of parity.
Finally, we decided to switch the mechanics up a bit more. Players would only put down two cards at a time, and the losing player kept the winning players two cards — the winning player then got to draw two, thus increasing the winning player’s chances of drawing into the winning card. Finally some player agency!
3) The main mechanic is loosely “push your luck”. wherein both players select two cards from their hand hoping to win out the other player.
