Cave Story Card Game - I need your help!

I need your ideas/help/testing expertise.
I'm working on a printable card game based on Cave Story.

This project is cancelled, sad to say!

SMALL UPDATE 4/27/2015: Print-and-Play SOON!
Totally still working on this, guys.
I'm drawing up the PNP. Here's a little pic of prototype cards:

The game's changed, and changed a lot for the better. It's feeling really good, and I'm looking forward to having you guys test a bit.



PNP and FULL DESCRIPTION coming SOON!





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PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Everything below has probably changed. That's ok, it's even better now.

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There are a few wrinkles to be ironed out. Here's where I am right now-

Cave Story Two-Player Competitive LCG

Instructions:

Spoiler

Goal: You win the game by either killing the BOSS card, or if your opponent has no HERO cards left in play, whichever comes first.

Set Up

Here's an overview of the play area:

Here's a closer look at your cards:

At the beginning of the game, both players may play one HERO and one WEAPON. Note that it must actually be a WEAPON card, not an item that might happen to be a weapon. Then each player draws 7 cards into their hands, and flip a coin to decide who starts as the good player, and plays their action phase first.

PHASES
There are 6 phases to every turn of the game.
1.Good action phase
During this phase, the currant good player may play characters and play cards/use actions marked "Action Phase", adding Red Energy according to the Red Energy cost of the card.

Place Red Energy tokens on the boss card.

2.Evil action phase
During this phase, the currant evil player may play creatures and play cards/use actions marked "Malefaction Phase", removing Red Energy from the boss card according to the Red Energy cost of the card.

The evil player may also play Red Flowers on any of the good characters, but the Red Flowers will only corrupt Mimingas. Red flowers add to the red energy pool.

3.Prep phase
During this phase, both players may play cards/use actions marked "Prep Phase". The good player plays first.

4.Battle Phase
During this phase, both players resolve any battles, place any damage, and play cards/use actions marked "Battle Phase".

5.Respite Phase
During this phase, both player may play cards/use actions marked "Respite Phase". Then players determine if the battle will continue by rolling Determination Dice. The Determination Dice will indicate either the beginning of another Battle phase, or the beginning of the Recovery phase.

6.Recovery Phase
During this phase, both player may play cards/use actions marked "Recovery Phase". Both players may discard any number of cards into their Cycle Pile, and draw cards until they have seven cards in their hands.

At the end of this phase, players shuffle their Cycle Piles into their draw decks.



Good Turn/ Evil Turn
Players take turns playing Good.
Whenever a player is on their "Good" turn, they may play only Good cards, when a player is on their "Evil" turn, they may play only evil cards.

Red Energy
Red Energy is the chaos running through the island, which is soaked up by the red flowers, distilled in the Demon Crown, and concentrated in the crystal. When you defeat the Doctor (2nd stage) he erupts in a shower of Red Energy.
Whenever a player plays a "Good" card, they add a number of Red Energy tokens to the pool (on the BOSS card) equivalent to the cost of the card (see card anatomy below)
When a player plays an evil card, he removes the cost of the card from the pool. Once there are no Red Energy tokens left, the evil player may play no more cards, until they are replenished.

Red Energy is persistent, it does not get discarded at the end of turns, so it's in your best interest to use up as much as you can during your evil turn.



Card Anatomy

Card cost: How many red energy to add (if a good card) or subtract (if a bad card) when you play this card.
The shape/color of this section will indicate if the card is a "good" card, or a "bad" card.

Attack: Used when card is HERO and engaged in battles

Health: How much damage the character can sustain. If the character has an amount of damage counters equal or greater than this number, you must discard the character.

Stamina: How much effort this character can expend - to "exert" a character, place one stamina token on the card. If a character has stamina tokens equal to their stamina number, they are exhausted. As soon as the stamina token that causes exhaustion is placed on the character, also place a damage counter on the character.
If a character has stamina 0, they are automatically counted as exhausted, but they take no damage as a result of being exhausted.

Resistance: Only Mimingas have resistance, it indicates how resilient each character is to the effect of the increasing levels of red energy in the world. If a Miminga has a number of Red Flower cards attached to it that are equal or greater than the Miminga's resistance, the Miminga is immediately corrupted (see Corruption below)

Set Icon: This indicates what set of cards the character belongs to, and can be used to indicate a group of characters linked by a common them, e.g. graveyard characters, plantation characters, etc.



Red Flowers
Red Flowers are evil cards that can be played on any active good cards during the Evil Action phase. These cards generally buff the cards they are attached to, but also may have negative effects, and ultimately will corrupt any Miminga who has too many of them attached.

A player MAY NOT attach red flowers to any of his own cards, good or evil.

EDIT: Red flowers add red energy when they are played (thus the +1, +2 red energy icons), and then add one red energy "income" every Evil Action Phase, for the player that owns the cards. The red flowers owned by a player become inactive during the player's good turn, providing no extra red energy "income" for the other player, who only receives red energy from their own cards.

Corruption
If a Miminga has a number of Red Flower cards attached to it that are equal or greater than the Miminga's resistance, the Miminga is immediately corrupted and placed in control of your opponent.
The Miminga is counted as an "evil" card until the next recovery phase or until it is killed. In both of these instances, the Miminga is then discarded into the original owner's discard pile, and all Red Flowers are placed in the owner's cycle pile.



Battles
Only good cards with HERO may battle.
All evil cards must fight a HERO once during a round - once all battles are resolved, enter the RESPITE phase and roll to see if the battle continues (see BATTLE ROUNDS below).

In a battle, the evil creatures are fought one at a time (unless a card gives them the ability to fight multiple creatures vs one HERO, see SWARM below) the good player decides in what order to fight the creatures. If there are more than 1 HERO, the good player decides which enemies fight which HERO cards, but each hero must fight at least one battle per battle round.

Compare the attack of the HERO with the attack of the creature the HERO is fighting, and the card with lower attack takes one wound. Before the fight is resolved, the good player may play any weapon attacks for any weapon they are carrying, and either player may play cards and use any action earmarked for the BATTLE phase, if possible, Once each player has finished taking battle actions and playing battle cards, the numbers are totaled and damage assigned.

Swarm
Creatures with SWARM have the ability to team up on a single HERO. When swarming, all cards with SWARM combine their attack, and if they win, they assign damage according to the number of SWARM cards involved in the fight. If they lose, all swarm cards sustain damage normally. All cards teaming up on a HERO must have the SWARM keyword, and the maximum number of cards that can SWARM is determined by the highest swarm number of the creatures involved.
For example, if you have four cards with Swarm 1, Swarm 1, Swarm 2, and Swarm 3, you may play up to the highest swarm number, which is 3 in this case.

The good player does not decide which cards swarm: during the PREP phase the evil player may "bind" swarm cards together into groups, and then the good player must treat each swarm group as a single fight.

Battle Rounds
Place a marker on the shared "Battle Rounds" card to keep track of the battle rounds. When a round is finished and you've entered the RESPITE phase, do what is indicated in the currant phase box to determine if battle progresses or ends. If battle progresses, start another PREP phase, and continue through the BATTLE and RESPITE phases as normal.

Discarding
If a character or creature is killed, he is placed in the discard pile.
Evil: At the end of the turn, any non-HELPER evil card still alive is placed in the cycle pile.



Weapons and Experience
Every time a HERO deals damage to a creature and kills the creature while using an attack card, the weapon attacking receives 1 experience point.

Note that you may only use one weapon's attacks per fight, and you may not play the experience on any other weapon. You may, however, change weapons between fights.

When a weapon gets an amount of experience equal to the requirement on the card, the weapon is upgraded to Level 2:

Flip the card around to indicate that it is Level 2. Now you may play both Level 1 and Level 2 attack cards for this weapon.

If a hero loses a battle while wielding a level 2 weapon, the good player may prevent 1 damage by reducing a Level 2 weapon to Level 1 with no experience.


Helpers
Good:
Any card without HERO is considered a helper. Helpers may not take part in battles, unless they are granted HERO by another card. Helpers are played in a row behind the HERO row, and they act as support for the HERO cards.
Evil:
Card must have HELPER to be considered a helper. These cards stay in play, even when non-HELPER evil cards are discarded at the end of the turn.


Triggering the BOSS card
When the amount of Red Energy on the BOSS card reaches the attack value of the BOSS card, the BOSS is automatically triggered and attacks the HERO of the player who placed the triggering red energy on the BOSS card.

When the BOSS is triggered, refer to your BOSS modifier card, and perform any requirements on it.

BOSS battle

The BOSS battle rules are still under development. Winning the BOSS battle is how you win the game, but I haven't nailed down the details yet.


Concerns:
Should Red Energy be persistent?

How does the BOSS battle work?

DOWNLOAD THE GAME HERE:
Cave Story LCG

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FINALLY:
I need your help getting word out there about this game. Please share with thread with other people who like Cave Story, games, and helping make cool things. Thanks for any way you can help, even if it's just a tweet!

#CaveStoryCardGame is going to take over the world!

EXAMPLE CARD LAYOUT:

I plan on using a mixture of Pixel's art, and original cave story artists, who I'll find/work with through deviantart. It's gonna be sweet, if full-color cards ever happen.​

UPDATE: PLANS

Decks I've mocked up:
"Mimiga Wars"
Which is set in Mimiga town: it is Quote and the Mimigas vs. the Gravekeeper and Pignons, mostly.

"Egg Corridor"
This is the first set of Egg Corridor cards, the second will involve the hatchling dragons. This set is the basic Egg Corridor creatures, including Basil, Behemoths, and flying Beetles. The good side is Quote teamed up with some of the blue robots that are lying around in the Egg Corridor. It also includes the missile launcher, introducing multiple weapon wielding.

Here's more decks that I've got planned - (click spoiler)

Spoiler

Grasstown - Santa, Chaco, etc. vs jellies, frogs and mannan.

Sand Zone - Curly, her Mimigas, King, and Jenka vs Parrots, Skeletons, and enraged Toroko.

Labyrinth - More blue robots, Curly, and the doctor/nurse vs the Gaudi and Monster X.

The Core - a special booster with the core cards vs Quote and Curly

The Drain - Small evil booster BuyoBuyo, Fire Whirl, Fish, Fuzz, and Ironhead. A few good cards as a bonus, maybe Ikachan.

Egg Corridor/outer walls: Dragons, the sisters, timer bombs, and night spirits vs Kazuma, his dragon, Quote, and others.

Plantation: Droll, stumpy, and Midoren vs Mimigas, Momoren, etc.

Final Cave: All of the horrors of the final cave, Red Demon, Presses, etc.

Final Battle: Quote and company vs. Misery, the doctor, and the undead core.

Hell: A powerful booster for good and evil, including many bosses, like heavy press and the different forms of Ballos.

Momories: Delve into the history of the island, including characters like Arther, the killer robots, young Jenka, Young Ballos, and the previous Demon crown wearers.

 

Wow, this sounds really cool!
Would love to play this!
My friend, you are at start of something wonderful...

 

I dunno, maybe you could change the download location. ScribD isn't good, no no.

 

"WHAT I DON'T NEED: Criticism on the art"

I do believe I have nothing to say then.

 

The art is like a bad game from 2004.

Also spoilers would make your post a lot more bearable to scroll through.

 

is that zacharie?

 

Wow, this sounds really cool!
Would love to play this!
My friend, you are at start of something wonderful...

Thanks! If you feel like testing it out, give it a print. The next expansion is close to being done.

 

you guys, talking solely about art when he said he didn't need it


andhegames, you have interesting ideas, but in my opinion there are a lot of problems that make the game overly complicated and not that entertaining.

First of all: for the sake of controlling the action stack (the list of things you have to do each turn), you make the order in which the cards are placed matter so much that all cards activate one by one, in said order.
That's efficient, in that it helps controlling the flow well, but it effectively makes all cards "active" cards instead of "passive" ones.
For example, that "Speedy" card: seems cool, adds +1 to all of your defense cards. That's typically the kind of effect that should be passive. What should happen is this:
- The card reads "adds +1 to all defensive cards".
- At the beginning of each turn, it activates and gives all of your defenses +1.
- So it can be interpreted as a passive effect, that is "While this card is on the field, all defensive cards are +1".

However, what does happen is this:
- The cards reads "adds +1 to all defensive cards".
- At the beginning of the activation phase, the first cards get activated normally, then this one activates. All the defensive cards that are activated next are given +1.
- So can it be interpreted as a passive effect? "While this card is on the field, all defensive cards are +1" is wrong, since the ones that are activated first don't get the effect. "While this card is on the field, all defensive cards that are activated after this one are +1" is flawed, since it holds a notion of activation even though it should be a passive effect.

A correct way to formulate the passive equivalent would probably be something like "While this card is on the field, all defensive cards that are directly under this one OR to the right side of this one are +1". This technically works, but it's heavy, bothersome, and adds a notion of relative position of the cards.
I believe a card's physical position on the field relatively to other cards (not just position as in "it's in the monsters/defense/deck area" because that's normal) is metadata, and should be used in card effects only exceptionally.

So your action stack is (perfectly? I'm not even sure if there aren't gonna be any problems tbh) controlled, but the price to pay is an increasingly bothersome activation phase, and concepts that shouldn't be used too much in a card game (namely, physical position and active cards).

Second of all: if two of your cards have the same name, they should have the same characteristics (not necessarily the same graphics though). You have two "Bat"s that have different health and draw values. Not good, imo. Especially since you could have done diffently, what with all the different types of bats and low-lvel critters in Cave Story and stuff.

Third of all: "If you hadn't drawn a RUN card, once this final column was finished, you would discard all cards in play and in your hand, and go back to phase 1, repeating until you escape (or kill the enemy, but you can't do that until you have a weapon)."
The way I understand this, once you place all your cards on the field, you activate each of their effects etc etc yobladi yoblada then discard everything to start the next turn, right? In that case, why even bother placing the cards? Just read them one after the other and discard them. The unnecessary positioning of cards that are to be discarded (almost) immediately is annoying and doesn't really serve any purpose.

Fourth: "If the enemy's attack is greater than your defense, then roll an accuracy die. If the die rolls in the range shown on the card (3-6 means successful numbers are 3,4,5,6) and if the accuracy roll is successful, then do the amount of damage to Quote. If Quote dies, you obviously lose the game."
Am I going to talk about the fact that an enemy missing an attack should happen BEFORE an attack goes through your defense? Nah that would just be nitpicking. Let's say an attack "misses" if it doesn't hit a vital point.

Actual fourth: "Print and cut out the cards, laying them out like this:"
I find it sad that the order of enemies and such is already determined. It removes at least half of the interest, since you already know what you're gonna fight against, you don't need to manage your resources in anticipation of unknown threats, but you need to know the order of the cards, which (yet again) makes order and physical positioning important.
Basically that's yet another "lock" you added to your game in order to make sure the player plays it exactly like intended, this time in order to follow the original game's timeline (some bats, a heart container, some bats, some critters, the polar star).

In conclusion: your choices regarding your game seem to revolve solely around authenticity and control, greatly damaging the entertainment potential of your game. I'll say it again, but you seem to want to be sure the player follows the structure and timeline properly, by locking the order of enemies, forcing the activation of cards one after the other, forcing the player to put at least one card against each of the enemy's cards, removing every card played immediately after the turn is finished...
All those limits remove almost every random element from the game, making it boring to play more than once.
You wanted to adapt a (platforming) video game to a card game. That's an interesting idea (I had started making a Super Mario and a Yume Nikki card games too), but you seem too attached to the original gameplay and elements. A card game is drastically different from an adventure game; randomness is way more proeminent, resources must have to be managed efficiently, and elements in general are way less ephemeral. Oh, and did I mention the fact that one-player card games usually aren't really entertaining and successful?

In my opinion, you should rethink most of the way your game works, but I certainly hope you aren't going to give up on it because the concept is still pretty interesting. I'd like to hear about your work again in the future.

good luck

 

Hiino, thank you! This is just the kind of feedback that's incredibly helpful to me. I'm new new new at creating games, and I really appreciate the guidance. I've been making a few one-page printable games to practice, but I really want to refine this one and flesh it out.

I'm perfectly comfortable scrapping the idea of a one-player game, and I think the game could be made a whole lot more entertaining- here's a new idea. Let me know what you think, then I'll draw up a new set of cards to test.

I keep it a kind of deck-building game (in the sense that you'll add quite a bit to your deck as you move through the game), but we make it two player, scrap the cumbersome fight system, and remove the linear "Follow the storyline exactly" nature of the game. Perhaps you could play with sets of cards that correspond to different points in the game generally, and move to different areas to collect more cards.

Perhaps one player could play the island/environment/doctor, and the other player plays the good guys (maybe even multiple people vs. one bad player?) Perhaps the goal could be to move through the game's different levels, beating baddies on the way, and (ultimately) defeating the doctor at the end (this would be over the course of several smaller games with their own victory objectives, e.g. the Egg Corridor game ends when either the doctor/creature player kills Quote, or Quote kills Igor).

The game can incorporate more random elements, the most unpredictable element being your opponent.

I'm not quite sure what the new gameplay will look like - I'll have to start scribbling cards - but if you have any advice/ideas, I would welcome them.

Thanks again for the throughly helpful feedback!

 

Why not have player 1 represent player 1's Quote and player 2's enemies/obstacles, and player 2 represent player 2's Quote and player 1's enemies/obstacles? Essentially you would be overcoming the other player's enemies/obstacles whilst setting your own for the other player. Build on that premise and everything should fall into place from there.

 

Why not have player 1 represent player 1's Quote and player 2's enemies/obstacles, and player 2 represent player 2's Quote and player 1's enemies/obstacles? Essentially you would be overcoming the other player's enemies/obstacles whilst setting your own for the other player. Build on that premise and everything should fall into place from there.

I LOVE THAT IDEA. It hearkens back to the LOTR CCG, and it eliminates a lot of the tricky balancing issues. Yes!
Any thoughts on symmetry? I would like to make this game so that players are playing with different, asymmetrical decks, but I'm not sure if/how that will work.

 

Why not have player 1 represent player 1's Quote and player 2's enemies/obstacles, and player 2 represent player 2's Quote and player 1's enemies/obstacles? Essentially you would be overcoming the other player's enemies/obstacles whilst setting your own for the other player. Build on that premise and everything should fall into place from there.

I like this. It's a classic way of guaranteeing symmetry between the two players.

I would like to make this game so that players are playing with different, asymmetrical decks, but I'm not sure if/how that will work.

Correctly, I guess.
Provided your game is complex enough (not complicated, but complex as in it has lots of different possible combinations with cards having varied and numerous effects, etc), you will absolutely not be able to control each deck's chances to win against every other deck. This is left to the development of the metagame, which will happen after your game is released and people start playing it widely. New combos, optimizations, etc will be discovered, and decks that are better than others will pop out.
If one deck archetype is too weak, you will add better cards to it, and if others are too strong, you will cease to add relevant cards to it for a while. That's basically how it works. There is no problem in a flawed balance of forces in the early days of a card game.

For example, Yu-Gi-Oh's first cards, in the most part, solely consisted in unbelievably weak monsters along with unbelievably strong magics, which resulted in most of said magics being banned and most of the old monsters not being played ever.
Magic: the Gathering's beginnings saw the rampagings of the Power Nine (and among them, the Black Lotus: the priciest, probably rarest, and most of all (and by far) the strongest Magic card ever released). Well, they got banned from most tournament formats. End of story.

So my advice would be for you not to worry too much about giving everyone the same chances. You should just focus on making the game enjoyable for now.

 

Ok, so the cards are available now, completely re-tooled with new rules. Give 'em a try - let me know what you think of the new game.

The goal is to have different printable decks/card sets so you can build your own deck, but right now I just have one deck available to test with.

It's not quite finished - I welcome your ideas on how to deal with Boss fight/fights, and any other problems/game adjustments.

Thanks for your feedback! Pick it apart, break it, let's really stress-test this game.
Ok, so the cards are available now, completely re-tooled with new rules. Give 'em a try - let me know what you think of the new game.
It's not quite finished - I welcome your ideas on how to deal with Boss fight/fights, and any other problems/game adjustments.

Thanks for your feedback! Pick it apart, break it, let's really stress-test this game.

 

Just a typo, but "Miminga" should be spelt "Mimiga".

What is the maximum size for a deck?

Regarding bosses and win conditions:
Personally I think boss cards should be special enemy cards that should only be playable when certain conditions are met. Say for instance you can play Ma Pignon (which should be a boss anyway) after discarding 3 Giant Pignons from play.

This leaves the win condition being the loss of all your opponent's heroes and/or enemies from play, or more specifically the opponent landing on a turn where they can't defend themselves is a win for you. Of course the problem with this idea is that the game could be over too quickly, so an idea to counter this and give the opponent a chance to recover is what I'd like to call bipolar mode. Under this idea, the player will be granted the option to use their enemies as heroes as well as enemies only if all their heroes have fallen, and to use their heroes as enemies as well as heroes only if all their enemies have fallen. Bosses of course would be unable to fight on the heroes' side to make things fair, so if a turn arrives where you only have bosses and no heroes or normal enemies left on the field then you've lost the game under this logic. Of course once both heroes and enemies are in play at the same time bipolar mode will end.

Just an idea.

 

I dunno, I like the idea of one singular boss. Your bipolar mode suggestion doesn't make much sense to me. I mean mechanically yes I understand it but it just doesn't seem right at all.

 

Well lets be honest, for such a mechanic to work you need two boss cards for a start, otherwise there is no way to determine who plays the card. Hell, if there is one boss and both players can go after it when it is activated then that completely invalidates the rest of the game.

How would you determine what boss card gets placed anyway? The player would most likely have several. Not to mention the balancing act that is having differing winning conditions.
Would the bosses even be part of your deck or separate?
How would you even do anything once your opponent's team activates the boss short of taking out all his heroes or beating him to the punch?

I mean the boss system sounds fine at a glance, but I find myself struggling to understand how it would even work within the game's mechanics.

Edit: What about if both players draw their first hand and must redraw until they get at least a boss card and a hero card to put into play. Extra boss cards can be applied to enemy cards for added effects so that they aren't dead weight. Boss cards will be activated by red energy as per the rules in the first post. The boss is controlled by the opposing player (only when activated) and cannot be attacked while there are three or more of the opposing player's enemy cards are in play (or something of the like).

 

Just a typo, but "Miminga" should be spelt "Mimiga".

Oops. Thanks.

What is the maximum size for a deck?

Not sure yet. Right now they're 64 cards, but I'm not sure I need to set a limit on deck size yet.

Regarding bosses and win conditions:
Personally I think boss cards should be special enemy cards that should only be playable when certain conditions are met. Say for instance you can play Ma Pignon (which should be a boss anyway) after discarding 3 Giant Pignons from play.
This leaves the win condition being the loss of all your opponent's heroes and/or enemies from play, or more specifically the opponent landing on a turn where they can't defend themselves is a win for you.
Of course the problem with this idea is that the game could be over too quickly, so an idea to counter this and give the opponent a chance to recover is what I'd like to call bipolar mode. Under this idea, the player will be granted the option to use their enemies as heroes as well as enemies only if all their heroes have fallen, and to use their heroes as enemies as well as heroes only if all their enemies have fallen. Bosses of course would be unable to fight on the heroes' side to make things fair, so if a turn arrives where you only have bosses and no heroes or normal enemies left on the field then you've lost the game under this logic. Of course once both heroes and enemies are in play at the same time bipolar mode will end.

Interesting idea, It might be able to work without the need to use the bipolar mechanic. I understand why that makes since as far as gameplay goes, but thematically it would be really strange to have the Doctor fighting his own minions, or whatever. I want to see if we can get the one boss idea working first.

Maybe both players can bring a boss, and one is selected at random?

Maybe the both bosses are triggered at once, and they just alternate players (for example, I bring Balrog, and my opponent brings Ma Pignon, and when the bosses are triggered, I fight Balrog while he fights Ma, and then we switch until one of us is dead, or one of us kills a boss).



EDIT:

What about if both players draw their first hand and must redraw until they get at least a boss card and a hero card to put into play. Extra boss cards can be applied to enemy cards for added effects so that they aren't dead weight. Boss cards will be activated by red energy as per the rules in the first post. The boss is controlled by the opposing player (only when activated) and cannot be attacked while there are three or more of the opposing player's enemy cards are in play (or something of the like). </quote>

I like that idea, I think the players will automatically play a HERO card and a BOSS card from their decks, to eliminate the possibility of redrawing over and over again.

 

I like that idea, I think the players will automatically play a HERO card and a BOSS card from their decks, to eliminate the possibility of redrawing over and over again.

Well the need to draw again will happen anyway, and it is generally faster than the alternative. However to reduce redraws you could do this:

Shuffle deck.

Redraw until you have at least one hero card to play.

If boss card is drawn with deck prior to receiving a hero card then automatically play it and draw one card to replace it. If the new card is a hero card then commence play, else continue to redraw your hand until you have at least one hero card.

If the boss card is drawn with the hero cards then play it, draw one card to replace it.

If you have drawn a hand with at least one hero without drawing a boss card then flip one card at a time off the remaining deck face up until you have a boss card to play.

Shuffle draw discard pile and remaining deck together afterwards.

An important consideration is to apply better enemy effects to weak bosses and weaker enemy effects to strong bosses, so that a balance can be struck.

Also important is that a hand must be seen by the other player before discarding it, to prevent cheating.

This should bring the whole thing down to no redraws in normal circumstances, and maybe a short card flip, with a very occasional 1 or 2 redraws if lady luck is against you or you fail at deck building.

 

Well the need to draw again will happen anyway, and it is generally faster than the alternative. However to reduce redraws you could do this:

Shuffle deck.

Redraw until you have at least one hero card to play.

If boss card is drawn with deck prior to receiving a hero card then automatically play it and draw one card to replace it. If the new card is a hero card then commence play, else continue to draw until you have at least one hero card.

If the boss card is drawn with the hero cards then play it, draw one card to replace it.

If you have drawn a hand with at least one hero without drawing a boss card then flip one card at a time off the remaining deck face up until you have a boss card to play.

Shuffle draw discard pile and remaining deck together afterwards.

An important consideration is to apply better enemy effects to weak bosses and weaker enemy effects to strong bosses, so that a balance can be struck.

Also important is that a hand must be seen by the other player before discarding it, to prevent cheating.

This should bring the whole thing down to no redraws in normal circumstances, and maybe a short card flip, with a very occasional 1 or 2 redraws if lady luck is against you or you fail at deck building.

Hmm, I'll give it a try in play testing. Thanks!

 

is this still being worked on? I love the idea of this card game so far but I will need to study it more to understand it better
(I skimmed through it)