I have been all through the design ideas of "Crystal Heroes". And just today, I looked some of my "prototypes" for the "core" game. And I came up with some AWESOME ideas such as multiple card "melds"... which add a whole new "dimension" to the game!
I was working with "operators" and "operands" in a later design... And while the ideas seemed cool -- I couldn't get everything to work together. That was until today, where I suddenly realized that "melds" solved all my problems.
My thoughts about "operators" were that combining all the cards would be put into an "equation". And so I had "+", "-" and "x". But it was stupid that players would have to play "-" to "lower" their overall score. "Melds" FIX that problem too... Now I have the "|" (Guild) operator and it is used in TANDEM with the "-" (Magic) to combine to form a "+" too! Real excited with that. Also the "x" operator is also used as part of a "+" and "x" "meld" too. Just tightens the design.
I was missing "Mana" as the source of power to use various abilities... And I also got that fixed too: by simply adding one (1) additional card and one (1) card for measure to a Player's Deck. So now a Player's Deck = 12 cards (instead of 10). Pretty darn lean!
So this design has merited more "investment" time. See where this all leads me if anywhere! (LOL) I played with the prototype today -- and it was cool even if I had not solved my "Mana" issue. Now having a solution will merit re-visiting the entire design and making a brand, spanking *NEW* prototype!
Will be working on that tomorrow... Cheers everyone!
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Not as much got done as I wanted
Well thanks to @FrankM suggestions, I managed to finish that LAST "special ability" used by the Dwarven Warlord. This was not only the last card part of the series, it is also meant to be a BONUS card too.
With that done -- I'll need to work on the cards next week.
The matrix is all done and the abilities have all been named and labelled. The only thing remaining is to create ANOTHER prototype and play the game again (several times ... to get a feel for how the game plays).
That's all for now. I'll hopefully post up a more complete entry some time next week! Cheers...
Card Template (The Duke)
This is still a "rough" draft of the template. But it gives you an idea about the card layout. Not too much and enough to play!
Found another "nugget" of assets to explore
I knew maybe 6 months to 1 year ago, I had penned down as series of Modifiers + Targeting rules. These components would be used to "streamline" the abilities used in my "Archon" game. Now while that design isn't in development, at this time, I wanted to "borrow" those Modifiers and Targeting rules for "Crystal Heroes".
How will this work?
Well the idea is that the play area uses 15 distinct Modifiers to classify ALL of the various things that can happen to a card. Next it use 11 unique Targeting rules for encompassing all the units that can be targeting by an ability.
For example:
"Wound Facing 1: -1CP"
The literal translation is "Wound one facing unit by -1 Crystal Point."
Obviously the SHORT version is condensed and once you become familiar with all 15 Modifiers and 13 Targeting rules, it becomes easier to play... Even though most are intended to be pretty self-explanatory.
Will be working on "re-wording" using those components with my matrix tomorrow.
Hopefully I will be able to "express" each Ability with this component duo.
Cheers!