Checkpoint 1

During ideation, we brainstormed a concept of a physical, rogue-like, deck-building card game

Problem Statement

What if rogue-like card games like Slay the Spire were real card games and PVP instead of PVE?

Gameplay Experience

While creating an image of our gameplay experience we aimed to answer the essential question:

What experience do we want to provide for your players through this game?

And with that question, we brainstormed what contributes to the appeal of card games in general as well as similar, rogue-like card games.

We decided to target these experiences:

Competitive - We wanted our players to feel a competitive spirit while playing this game considering conflict naturally arises from PvP encounters. Targeting a competitive experience, players will ultimately feel captivated and motivated to win.
Strategy - A competitive game inevitably inspires strategy to win. Heightened by being a deck-building card game, strategy contributes largely to the player experience.
Suspense - A well-balanced game will naturally create suspense, as any player can win throughout the match regardless of current status. This also adds to the enchantment of these games, as the suspense draws players in.
Intense - The combination of the previous experiences contributed to the intensity of the match. Targeting intensity as a player emotion is beneficial to the overall experience of the game.

Game Core

After brainstorming targeted player experiences, we focuses on what exactly constitutes our game. Similar to other rogue-like card games, we found that the game core is primarily made up of two phases, combat phase and buy phase. Combat phase is where players initiate in combat through the current cards in their deck. After the combat phase is ended, the game transitions into a buy phase where players can buy cards from the shop.

This cycle leads to a core gameplay loop of:

Get Cards → Combat Players → Buy Cards

Although simple, we found this loop to be comprehensive and effective.

PLAYERS

2 - 4 players

For this concept, we found that two to four players lead to the most enjoyable experience.

Gameplay Duration:
~30 minutes

For a board game, we did not want to have a long, drawn out game that players need to dedicate their time too. So instead, we decided that a duration ~30 minutes would be best suited for the nature of the game.

Play Types

Competitive

Through the competitive nature of PvP, we decided that a competitive play time would well-describe our game.

Skill-Based Play

This play type is unavoidable, as players continuously evolve through deck-building and naturally use strategy to win against other players.

Chances and Uncertainty

Since some of the game aspects are randomized to encourage replay-ability, the game is described by chances and uncertainty.

Roleplaying

Players play as their respective characters encouraging role-play within the game.

Goal

The goal of this game would be to eliminate all of the other opponents by reducing their health points to zero.

Obstacles and Challenges

As for obstacles within the game, the other players serve as the biggest challenges. Deck building also challenges the player by forcing them to think strategically on how to optimize their deck.