Rather than making a video game this year, I decided to make a card game. I've always wanted to make tabletop games (in particular tabletop roleplaying games and war games) just because they allow you to be a lot more creative with an initial concept and really run with it. You're no longer bogged down by the technical or logistical aspects of making a game and can instead just purely focus on design language.

What I Wanted to Do

I was really not into the theme when I first saw it, and to be honest I still don't really like it. However, I did think it would make for some really cool board game ideas. For a while I was struggling between two ideas: 1) stock market themed deckbuilding game with a single, shared deck that players add cards to as a way to manipulate the stock market and 2) a card game about earth elementals that use parts of their body to fight, heal, and buy items. I went with the latter, but I still really like the other idea and will probably revisit it at some point.

The Initial Playable (Day 1)

After about a day of writing down basic rules and making all the cards, I had a playable to run.

The original playable had players draft cards out of a hand of 8 during the eating phase. This was partially because drafting is one of my favorite mechanics in all card games, definitely up there with guessing games and bluffing. However, with a phase of the game that overall had very little strategy (of course I'll choose stuff like Iron or Gold over Stone and Soil) there was just no point and it took up way too much time.

The most broken thing about this build was the ability to quad wield weapons, letting you stack something ridiculous like 4 Greatswords.

Playable #2 (Day 2)

This build is much closer to the current game. Notable changes include only being able to dual wield at maximum, a simplified eating system, nerfing weapon damage across the board, rebalancing the trade deck, and simplifying market trades.

This playtest was notable for me topdecking 3 Iron out of the first turn, letting me purchase a Spear (at the time Spears had 6 ATK instead of 4). Then I proceeded to topdeck 3 Gold the next turn, letting me purchase a Crossbow (which had 12 ATK back then and costed 2 Gold). Bullying ensued and weapons were nerfed again.

What Went Well

For once I feel like I have an actual finished game for Ludum Dare. So I guess that's something worth celebrating. Making a card game let me just quickly get my ideas into something that can be fully played start to finish, which let me spend most of the jam refining mechanics and balancing the game rather than creating the technical framework for how the game would work. It's really quite refreshing to just change a few words on a piece of paper to add new gameplay.

What Went Poorly

The game is greatly slowed down by the trade phase, which I feel takes too much time to really process all the potential gains you can get. Currently, you have 5 different merchant cards you can trade with, along with all the trades that are always available via the market. You also have to think about how you're going to allot minerals from your inventory and how you're going to distribute your defenses for the upcoming combat phase. It's just so much slower than "draw 3 cards and choose between the 2 effects" or "choose a limb to attack". However, the trade phase is still meant to be the more strategic part of the game, so its very hard to strike a good balance between complexity and speed.

Final Thoughts

I don't think I've ever had this much fun (and this little stress) during a jam before. Making an analog game just feels so much more relaxed and so much more fun.

I wish I did have more time to playtest the game though. I didn't get to test the current build before publishing it, so it may or may not be completely broken. Likely, stonewalling is a bit too easy to do right now if anything.

Either way, I hope you enjoy Elemental Warfare even if it's a broken mess!