Faybound - Keywords

One of the concerns that came out of planning for a post-jam version of Faybound was whether the card play could be deep enough. That seems like an easy question, as cards are a hugely flexible mechanism, and there is a glut of digital card games in the wild. However there are some constrains on Faybound that are not as well explored in the space.

I've attached a new build of the combat demo with these changes if you want to try it out.

Constraints

These constraints aren't set in stone, but they are a starting point. 

• Most cards will not have unique art. This has a huge cost in time and money and would probably mean an end to the project. (This actually helps guide a large portion of design decisions - might be a topic for a whole blog post at some point)
• That means the card text needs to be quick and functional, as an aid to readability that is lost without unique art.
• Your deck does not have any way to bring in additional creatures onto the battlefield. Adding additional targets mid-fight would really change the balance and is a large divergence from the monster-trainer format.
• There is currently not a dedicated "play space" where ongoing effects could live and you could build for future turns. That means few opportunities to invest for future turns. There might be some opportunities here, but the lack of unique card art makes this a readability problem. These sorts of cards can also slow the gameplay down.
• That means almost all cards are one-time events.

Exploration

Before pushing back on any of these constraints, it would be good to push outward and try to fill the available space. It would also be good to have a baseline set of mechanics that can be built off of and expanded. This is a sort of bottom-up approach to card game design.

Creating a set of common keywords for abilities and starting to flesh those out can help set the tone for how other cards can work. Using common keywords also leaves room for future iterations and allows for quickly testing variations across a growing card pool.

(Note: all these keywords may change names or functionality in future)

Messing With Turn Structure

As a reminder, a round is a series of turns. Each turn is generally a single card play. Your hand and resources are only refreshed at the start of the round.

The first thing to really try was to explore the alternating card play. The Slow keyword was discussed on the previous blog post, and opposite that is the Quick keyword. The Slow keyword means this card doesn't resolve until the start of your next turn. The Quick keyword lets you play another card after this one without passing priority to the other player.

The Affinity keyword triggers a bonus effect if you played a card with the indicated type earlier in the round. The Combo keyword triggers a bonus effect if you already played a card this turn. This interacts with both the Quick and Slow keywords, as a Slow card from the previous turn or a Quick card this turn both trigger the effect.

The last idea in this vein is the Cantrip keyword. This triggers an effect at the start of the next round. The name comes from Magic The Gathering, but some of the other meanings might be too well known to use that specific word. This is a trickier design space. It works best for simple automatic actions like drawing a card or gaining resources because of the temporal distance from play to resolution.

Messing With Positioning?

Another obvious area to explore is to make the creature's position on the board matter. This is a tricky subject - the heart of the game is really around the type system. It is hard to make positioning matter without also making it a game all about positioning. Limiting the position of who you can attack undercuts the weaknesses and resistances heavily.

Maybe there is a light-touch version of this that could work in certain circumstances? The normal-type cards currently side-step the type system, so maybe some could use a keyword that limits attacks to the front-most opponent? That isn't great, as that is effectively limiting player decisions.

For now, this feels like territory for other games to explore.

Stress?

One odd idea that came out of brainstorming stemmed from some miniature's games. The idea is that some cards with large effects would be "Stressful". When a creature used that, they would gain a stress status effect, which means they could not play another "Stressful" card until they were idle for a turn, or had something else clear the ability.

An alternative inversion of that idea would be that some cards require a status be set up in advance, like "Focused". You have to set up for a big ability before using it. Having a status effect means as an opponent you can know when a large attack could be coming, and potentially both players can interact with the status effect.

Both of these ideas are interesting, but both have problems.  From testing, knowing an attack might come doesn't really change your plans. There are too many other more important variables. As the player with the card, it's a little limiting as a strict restriction. It's yet another state that can prevent card play.

The biggest issue with these systems is that it has a lot of overlap with the Slow system, which is much more interesting and interactive. This probably doesn't make the cut.

Deepening Reactions

With the new back and forth cardplay, there was a bit of a gap for card that can interact with incoming attacks.

The first is a simple armor/guard concept, which gives you a temporary HP buffer (probably resetting at the end of the round). This can effectively soften blows, but might also be useful as a resource/reference for other things in future.

Previously, the stun keyword acted as a way to interrupt an attack, but it was a bit unintuitive as it was implemented as a status effect. The current iteration is a bit wordy, so this probably needs some more revision. The interaction is a little awkward because of some edge cases. e.g. there might be multiple attacks pending, the target might be invisible, you might want to target the enemy with a main action when they aren't attacking. This is more restricted design space than expected.

Next Steps

This feels like a good basis to build on. What comes next is a good question. Magic 8-ball says, "Concentrate and ask again". I haven't talked much about the overall game structure, but that is going to be a significant effort and there are some unknowns. Art is also a major concern. The promise with a monster-battler game is a wide range of creatures, and the game probably needs a lot of backgrounds.