Adventurers Gameplay

I mentioned that I'm going to be blogging a lot today, only partially to help me stay awake.

Last post I talked about the game design theory and the approach Mikael and I are taking towards our new game, at this point called "Adventurers".

Don't worry, that's a working title.

For the sake of posterity, I'd like to talk a bit about some of the mechanics we came up with, where they came from, and why we chose them.

Adventurers is a co-op card game with an automated dungeon very similar to Sentinels of the Multiverse. One of the things that we didn't like about Sentinels was that the game ended right as your character was starting to get awesome. In and of itself, Sentinels is a game that borrows heavily from Magic the Gathering in terms of several different streamlined decks with mechanics that play off well from other cards in their respective decks. It also borrows from the co-operative aspects of Dungeons and Dragons, except the dungeon master is replaced with another pre-made deck that flips over the top card during the "Villain" phase.

The game is awesome fun. Furthermore, its simple enough for our non-game-playing significant others to play with us.

The idea of this game was born when Mikael noted that Sentinels would be really fun with a campaign mode where your character would get stronger between rounds--a little more like Dungeons and Dragons.

D&D has a stigma, however, and Sentinel's biggest gameplay value is that its incredibly simple, yet can become complex. To add the level building feel of D&D, we added a Diablo-esque aspect of loot to your characters, along with addable/customizable stats--also in the form of cards.

The idea is that the game is 100% card based, because we loved the fast setup/cleanup time of Sentinels. For neutralizing certain cards out of the Campaign (Villain) deck, you're awarded an experience draw. An experience draw will be 2-5 cards from a pre-made pile of cards for your specific character. These cards could be anything from a special ability that comes immediately into play, or a piece of equipment that your character uses immediately and starts with at the beginning of the next round. For customization, your character can only choose 1-2 of the cards that you drew from your experience draw.

At the end of the round, the cards that you chose for your experience draw go into your deck, and become a stronger part of the deck that you started with. Depending on what cards you choose during your experience draw, your deck could become more spec'd toward, say, damage dealing--instead of choosing things that would make your character tankier.

One of the principles that we're trying to stick to is giving a large amount of restrictions to the player initially and then supplementing that with releases to those restrictions. For instance, Sentinels limits the number of cards you can play by allowing only one played card per turn, and Magic the Gathering limits your play to the amount of mana cards that you have out at any given time. Adventurers will use a stat-based resource system, which will all be in front of your character at the start of the game.

For instance, lets say that your character is a support-mage. You have 30 Health (3 spec points), 7 Mind (7 spec points) and 2 Strength (2 spec points). To use your "Heal" ability, you need to expend 3 Mind. You tap 3 Mind as many times as you want to use Heal--lets use Heal twice. Finally, you use "Light Punch" for 2 Strength. You now have 1 untapped Mind, 6 tapped Mind, and 2 tapped Strength. At the beginning of your next turn, you could choose one card (either Mind OR Strength) to untap.

Of course, only being able to untap one stat per turn would be ridiculous. The equipment that you get throughout the game will do things like allow you to untap additional stats, or lessen the costs of the abilities you're using. During your experience draw, you can choose passive cards that have a chance of coming up during your normal deck draw that also alter these mechanics further.

To compensate for these new mechanics, we've removed Sentinels' environment and put all hazards into the villain deck. Adventurers will have campaigns of sizes anywhere from 1-5 games, and every level of the campaign will use the same deck. Each level of the campaign will have a different "Boss" card, which change the ways the cards will play in the same deck.

For instance, lets say we have a 3-round Goblin Invasion Campaign. The deck might include several one-shots that do damage to heroes and Goblins that attack the highest HP hero every time. For the level 1 scenario, the Boss doesn't change any mechanics, and attacks all heroes for 1 HP every turn. The level 2 Boss would have more health, attack harder, and change all goblins so that any time they would attack the hero with the highest hit points, they hit the hero with the lowest hit points instead. Level 3 Boss might be immune to damage as long as there are less than 3 goblins in the trash, pulls one goblin out of the trash any time he deals damage, and heals for the same amount that any goblin deals damage for.

The above scenario was just something off the top of my head that shows how the "goblin" card in the campaign deck could be enhanced depending on what stage of the campaign you were currently on. Each campaign deck comes with a Treasure Deck, which the players flip over for defeating certain monsters in the Campaign Deck. Treasures will only be permanently equip-able items (to allow for ease of clean-up by keeping the backs of the treasure cards unique) that can be given to any of the heroes in the campaign. Until this item is replaced, it will remain a starting item for that player and occupy its appropriate item slot (ie, helmet, boots, gloves).

Finally, to replace the environment, a simple time-of-day mechanic will take its place. This will mostly add flavor by making it feel like you've been fighting for days within the course of an hour, and subtly influence certain effects. Thus far, the phases are morning, noon, evening, and sleep. Most of the time the villains and players rest during the night phase, and can untap two stat cards instead of one. Certain campaigns might take advantage of a time of day, like--for instance--the Troll Campaign, where the Trolls do no attacks during the morning and noon phases but flip over two cards each in evening and night. Each round of play would take one time-phase.

The game obviously needs a lot of work, but its amazingly fun to design. There are certainly things that will be axed, and certainly things that will be added, but we're happy with the core gameplay that we've come up with.