When creating a game (especially a card game), keywords can be an extremely useful design tool. When used effectively, keywords can help convey a lot of complex information to the player in a quick and accessible way. But when used incorrectly, you can accidentally leave players overwhelmed and frustrated. So when should you use keywords in your game, and how can you use them effectively? Let’s learn the key to using keywords.
Read moreChoose Your Allegiance: The Power of Factions in Card Games
As I’ve talked about in the past, balancing games is really hard. And while that’s true for all games, card games in particular are very tricky to balance. Often cards games will feature dozens if not hundreds of unique cards, all of which could have unintended game-breaking interactions with one another. As a designer, you need a way to keep specific cards separated while still providing players with the freedom to make whatever decks they want to play. Thankfully, there’s a simple design trick that does just that: factions!
Read moreWhat Player Type(s) Are You?
We all have our own unique motivations for playing games. Maybe you play games to make friends and meet new people. Maybe you play games to get immersed in exciting new worlds. Or maybe you play games cause you like making things explode. Whatever your motivations may be, as designers its our job to make sure that all types of players are engaged with our games. But what are the different player types, and how can we make sure that all of them are having fun? Let’s take a look at the many different ways of classifying players and see what we can discover.
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