What do you think of this IDEA?!

If you are going to use square cards, maybe mark each outer text wall with an arrow facing the direction for the defense and offense?

For a wall of text on a square card or rectangle card should shouldn't be a problem. There was a card game that bgdf had showed a half a year ago about a kickstarter game that was a huge rpg game that was $400 dollars. Players used figurines to move around the playing field and when a monster was encountered, the card had character actions and on the back side of that card had the monster encounter actions. So not having any artwork any where on the card is not that bad of an idea.

I think we as game designers follow a certain particular style for so long that it just became the norm in playing a trading card game or a collectable card game or a board game with a heavy card theme as in Dominion. Which I have never played , but heard about.

Step back from the typical style of playing the cards with huge artwork and 9 to 11 size font text and change the way the card is being read or played. Who knows the square tiles could be used as land locations for resources or territory regions or whatever.

For example:

In the Arcane Legion miniature game, the cards have wall text on one side and wall text on the other and a side lip for more text. Its card is rectangle but used in landscape style with a side foot note with text. The figurines are green and you can paint them yourself or leave as is and put the figurines on plastic trays for unit movement.

In the Card Capture card game, they have used Tarot sized cards. Great artwork and game title on the back.

If its different from what is normally out there, I say go with what will be different from the norm. If people by it for the odd look of the cards, so be it. If the game is not by the players or non players, so be it. It's not a mistake that the card was square or rectangle for the game, it was not bought due to awkwardness of just the card game or maybe how the game rules are explained.

Or how about this idea?

Use the square cards to build pyramids. Not just in Egypt in the game but all over the world. There a thousands of Pyramids on our Earth from different cultures that are still being explored and found.

Think outside the box. Be creative. Do something different.

Yes, my Dymino Monsters game uses rectangle cards. But the playmats being used in my game can make the players think differently on their movements during combat and defense.

Just something to think about.

Stormy.

If you have square cards, you still need space to tap them because the diagonal is longer than the side, unless you are going to have players pick up the card from the table every time they want to turn it, but that raises obvious issues of annoyance and time-consumption.

So the question is, how much space do you _really_ need? A rectangular card, which again gives an instant visual cue that it is tapped, needs a bit more space to tap than a square card, but it's not a lot.

If the added difference is enough to be a problem for your game, then you might want to consider how many cards you have in play in the first place? Unless this is a game you want people to be able to play on a cafe-table.. But even then, a game where you tile a significant part of the playing surface with cards that need to be tapped makes me worry about clutter. Doubly so if the cards are nothing but text on the front.