If you’ve spent any time browsing around gaming forums, you’ve likely stumbled upon countless posts calling for nerfs. Players are often quick to point out what things they believe are overpowered and that need to be immediately addressed. A lot of this stems from the perception that the role of a game designer is to ensure their game is perfectly balanced, and that if the game isn’t balanced they must step in to fix their mistakes.
Here’s the thing though: game balance doesn’t really matter very much.
Read moreSo I'm designing a "dicebuilder" game inspired by Splendor and Century. It also involves a lot of cards. This particular game involves five different dice colours and four different factions, each of which aligns to a colour. Cool.
I set out on a quest to make this dice game interesting and decided to make a bunch of cards that let you exchange dice [among other effects]. The idea was this:
- make generic cards that helped you gain dice.
- make faction-specific cards that did neat effects with your dice.
Both types of cards are placed in a pile, then the top six are laid out on a trade row a la deckbuilders. This means players will see six out of ~100 cards at a time.
I was wrong to think it'd be that easy.
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