First off , thanks for reading this.
I’d like to share the beginning of a card battler idea that uses an icon-synergy system I’m developing and would love to get your feedback.
Icons on a card don’t have any inherent meaning or abilities associated with them, however many card effects reference or only benefit cards with certain icons.
The icons on your cards will result in different gameplay and strategies based on the other cards you choose to include in your deck.
For example a ‘Take Flight’ spell might provide a defensive ability to a creature with the ‘wing’ icon. Replacing ‘Take Fight’ with a more aggressive ‘Dive Bomb’ card changes the potential behavior of all wing creatures in your deck.
Currently I have a rough idea for resolving combat:
This assumes cards typically have 2-3 icons each.
The cards in your hand can be played during combat to provide your battling creature with power.
Each icon on a card that matches an icon in your battling creature gives it +1 power.
Cards might also grant extra effects when used with creatures that have certain icons.
The creature with the highest final power wins the combat.
I have more I’m omitting to keep this introduction about the core of the system. I would love to hear any feedback on the system’s core concept, possible add-ons or mechanics you think would work well with this, or even any existing games that do something similar.
Thanks for your time and thanks again for reading!
-Nomad
That’s definitely my goal. I’m a minimalist designer when I can help it.
My struggle with this design is finding meaningful axes of interaction between players while remaining simple