I have made lots of card games over time, I keep them documented here and provide commentary on my ideas / learnings.
In the process of writing this page I reached the bottom and remembered why I designed my first card game. I realized that with my experience from school and time designing so many digital games that it would be in my interest to crate a card game that reflects my old inspirations with better design foresight.
So I designed a game I’m calling “Secret Base” as a prototype. The art is not so pretty yet and there are still some conceptual pain points but I am working to make this idea far more streamlined than any of my previous attempts at emulating 4X in a boardgame.
I made this card game in my 2nd year of college, the inspiration was to make a card game that reflected the struggle of an industrial society running out of it’s primary fuel source. The narrative being techno-magical industries running out of mana to refine and fighting over it to the bitter end.
There was one deck with multiple copies of all the cards shown below, players took turns drawing from the deck until the deck ran out and the game ended. the winner was determined by how many cards could be captured from other players before all the resources had been expended.
Cards fell into two categories, lower level machines that produced mana, and upper level machines that consumed it.
Cards that converted raw mana into colored mana and managed economy.
Red Refinery
Blue Refinery
Green Refinery
Fuel Storage
cards that consumed mana to gain advantage against the other players.