#3 - Paper Prototype - Goddess Wars

Goddess Wars

This game came from a desire to create my own card. I drew influence from some of my favorite games including Stratego, Weiss Schwarz, Magic; The Gathering, Android NetRunner, League of Legends, and Hearthstone, Fire Emblem, and Valkyria Chronicles.


In game creation their the balancing of luck and skill is one of the major problems at hand. Especially in a card game. Where both elements of luck and skill are necessary.

If you enjoy making games I encourage you to watch this video from creator of the ever popular Magic: The Gathering and his lecture on Luck and Skill in Game Design.

Goddess Wars (Working Title)
In this game players find themselves battling over whose (Waifu, Goddess) reigns supreme. Using identical decks players must send forth their soldiers to overcome and defeat their opponents false diety.

Materials: Basic Deck of Playing cards, 5x5 Game board, Additional Cards to act as markers or tokens, Card Sleeves. Dice for counting

Setup: Split the deck of cards by color to create two separate decks of 26 deck of cards. In each deck include 1 joker to create 2 decks of (27) cards. Each must also create or use another unique card to act as their main Goddess card.

Once both players have created two identical decks, they place their goddess card onto the table in the zone designated by the letter G. Players than shuffle and randomize each others decks.

Objective: Reduce the opponents Goddess’ health to 0

Types of Cards

Goddess – The goddess card is a unique card or token that begins in play in the goddess zone. The Goddess is representation of your character and has a basic stat of 5 Attack and 30 Health. (X/30)

Unit Cards – Units whose health reaches 0 are discard zone

2 – Cavalry (1Attack/1Health) – If this unit is face up this unit may move two spaces if alone.

3 – Basic Soldier (2Attack/2Health)

4 – Attacking Soldier (3Attack/1Health)

5 – Defensive Soldier (0Attack/4Health)

6 – Ranged Soldier (1Attack/ 1 Health) This unit may conflict a unit two spaces away, if conflict is done this way this unit does not receive damage. (When this unit is rallied with another it may use this ability)

7 – Pawn (Attack) 2/2 Health – This unit may move diagonally to conflict. (When this unit is rallied with another it may not use this ability)

8 – Support – (1Attack/3Health)

9 – Mid range (3Attack/3Health) – When this card is revealed, discard a card.

10 – Heavy – (5Attack/5Health) – This must be played face up and cannot Rally with other cards

Ace – (0Attack/1Health) – Whenever conflict is done with this card place all cards in conflict are discarded.

Unique Cards – Upon resolving of effects cards are placed into the discard zone.

Jack – You may reveal one of your opponents cards on the field.

Queen – Remove 2 damage counters from a card (Heal)

King – Draw 2 cards, then discard 1

Joker – Spy – When this card is played you may take one card from your opponent’s hand, your opponent then draws a new card.

Simulated Play: Both players roll a dice to determine who goes first. The player who rolls the higher number plays first and the person going second draws an additional card. Players than take turns achieve victory.

Turn Simulation

Players may perform 3 actions during their turn.

Reinforce – Draw an additional Card

Deploy – Place a Card on a summoning zone, designated by a green X in their area. Cards may either be played face down or face up.

Rally – Cards that are adjacent to one another may combine to create a single unit

(Rallying, when 2 cards are rallied together their total (attack and health stat are added together)
Move – Move a card one space (Up,down,left,right)

Reveal – Players may reveal a face down card to activate its ability or effect.

Play a Unique Card - (Joker, Jack, Queen, King,)

Attack/Encounter – Move a unit onto a space occupied by an enemy unit. To go to a state of Conflict (See Conflict sub=section for phase additional information)

Rules of Conflict – Conflict: Move a unit into space occupied by an opponent’s unit. When Conflict occurs all cards engaged in conflict are turned face up. Compare Health and Attack totals subtracting total health and attack from the opponents. Units are given damage counters (dice) equal to the amount of the opposing attack value. Each marker is equal to one (-1 Health). Units whose health totals are reduced to 0 are discarded.

Special Rules.

Refresh - When a player’s deck reaches 0 cards the player, takes all cards in their discard pile and reforms a new deck, the player then puts 1 damage counter on their Goddess Card.

Session 1 - V.0 Brainstorming - First Draft

In this session I had already decided on what type of game that I wanted to create. A card game. Having played several kinds of card games over the years, the strategy, skill, and mechanics have always been an appealing game archetype.

We created a game using only cards from a basic 52 card deck. However in this version we removed all cards without a number and only used the basic 2-10 and the Ace. So we each had a 20 card deck.
the field was set at 4x3 and at this point no Goddess there was no goddess.

To be honest we just wanted to create a system of battle and game play and made rules as we went along to work out any major kinks.

In this session we created the 3 Action system, Area of Play, Battle System v.1, The Rally system, and the Ace System.

- 3 Action system - players perform 3 actions per turn
- Area of Play - 3x4 grid, with zones for summoning
- Battle System v.1 - Battle is similar to Hearthstone, health and attack are basic sum totals according to card 2/2, 3/3, 4/4 etc. Damage is permanent.
- Rally System - the main system of our game, where players may combine cards in order to create a more powerful card
- Ace System - developed after seeing the first major first order victory strategy, the ace became the card to prevent this strategy from occuring


Of course this version of the game was broken in so many ways. We didn't actually have an end game objective. But what we found was that our simulation of play was both fun and engaging.

We implemented the concepts of Hand Management, Area Control, and Deception.

Session 2 - V.3 - Playing with the Less experienced

Having mulled over the game I upgraded the game a little more with the creation of the Goddess System, First turn Advantage Fix, Victory Condition, Event Card System and made changes to the Area of Play as well as making adding fixes to basic card game rulings and zones and system of order.

Goddess System - The main victory condition and thematic focus, players fight to defeat the
opposing goddess
First Turn Advantage Fix - turn player going second draws and additional card to stipulate disadvantage
Victory Condition - Defeat the enemy goddess, reduce their health to 0.
Event System - The face cards now have special abilities, such as Peek, Charity, Healing, and Traitor.
Area of Play v.2 - Field is now 5x5, Summon zones and Goddess Zones Designated.

This session was actually both a failure and eye-opener. The tester whom I was paired with had no actual experience with game design and mechanics of a card game so I was poised with explaining everything. I reduced some of the mechanics down to the first version and only implemented the Goddess System, First Turn Advantage Fix, and Victory Condition. At first it was very confusing for my tester as they did not understand the concepts of card advantage or battle mechanics and subtraction. The play we got through was not the best but I was able to get a rough grasp of the gameplay time 20+ minutes. Most importantly I discovered just how difficult my game was and how
 much more I needed to flesh out.

Session 3 - V.2.1 - FishBowling

A type of session that I use to make decks for other collectible card games where I play the game by myself to create a system of worst possible scenarios. I added sleeves to the cards and fleshed out a few rules. Nothing major but just personal testing.

Session 4 - V.3 - Playing with the Weebs

The best way for me to get testing done was to play with my own group of card game nerds. This play was actually one of the best and helped me work out a few major kinks and develop new ideas for the game.

The games played were using version 2. After several games we discovered that the number system combined with the battle system was too hard to keep track of, a little boring, and lacked interest. We however found the event cards to be the the most fun aspect of the game as it often threw a in a mix to the basics of battle.

As the sessions went on we created a rough list of units for each card.

Unit Cards – Units whose health reaches 0 are discard zone

2 – Cavalry (1Attack/1Health) – If this unit is face up this unit may move two spaces if alone.

3 – Basic Soldier (2Attack/2Health)

4 – Attacking Soldier (3Attack/1Health)

5 – Defensive Soldier (0Attack/4Health)
6 – Ranged Soldier (1Attack/ 1 Health) This unit may conflict a unit two spaces away, if conflict is done this way this unit does not receive damage. (When this unit is rallied with another it may use this ability)

7 – Pawn (Attack) 2/2 Health – This unit may move diagonally to conflict. (When this unit is rallied with another it may not use this ability)

8 – Support – (1Attack/3Health)

9 – Mid range (3Attack/3Health) – When this card is revealed, discard a card.

10 – Heavy – (5Attack/5Health) – This must be played face up and cannot Rally with other cards

Ace – (0Attack/1Health) – Whenever conflict is done with this card place all cards in conflict are discarded.

Unique Cards – Upon resolving of effects cards are placed into the discard zone.

Jack – You may reveal one of your opponents cards on the field.

Queen – Remove 2 damage counters from a card (Heal)

King – Draw 2 cards, then discard 1

Joker – Spy – When this card is played you may take one card from your opponent’s hand, your opponent then draws a new card.

We used this first draft of unique units and found varying degrees of success and failure.

We also came up with the idea of Unique Goddess Ability - not all Goddess are the same to simulate different types of decks and strategies.

The Future

 I plan to continue developing this game even further. Having gone through several sessions I believe this is definitely something that can garner interest. However in order to make this playable I need to create playable cards and assets for use rather than playing cards.

#2 - In Class Session - The King of Tokyo

In a battle for control 6 monsters fought it out to determine who would be:

Rather than joining in this game I would be given the chance to act as the mediator and rules instructor. Seeing as no one in my group had ever played this game It was the perfect chance for me to to have a chance at direct observation of a session rather than through participation.

Setup was fairly simple as I explained the conditions of victory. Reach 20 victory points, or be the last monster standing. Rolling the dice as a means to heal, punch, or score your way to victory. Along with punching and healing and scoring, players are able to purchase power up cards to increase their chances of victory.

The first round of dice rolling was a basic learning of rules for all the players and the true personalities of each players started to show. As they each took their turns rolling they slowly began to learn the rules of the game and slowly started developing their own strategies.

Unfortunately there was a huge cog that commonly disrupted the immersion of the game play. Because this session, was an assignment there were two types of players, those interested and those being forced to play the game. In this sample group of 6 players I had 5 from the class and 1 outsider who joined on a whim.

In this session report I will go over the player types and strategies that were observed

The first type of player was "Headstrong" type. This person play style is based on a lack of understanding of the rules and objective. This person resorts to often high risk plays with no thought or strategy whatsoever. This player was also the first to be eliminated.

The second type of player is the "Thinker" type. This person is the kind of person who asks about rules and was generally interested in the game. They develop strategies as they begin to learn the rules and often ask questions pertaining to the limits of what they can and can't do. They often gave advice to the other players and considered the design of the game and the decisions behind the rules of the game. Because this archetype is able to gain some understanding of the rules quickly they immediately became the target of elimination. This player became the second to be eliminated. The most unfortunate part about this is that this person was the one who was not part of the class.

The third type is the "Bystander" type. This person has a general understanding of the rules is able to play along to an extent. But unfortunately becomes the bystander of the aggression when the "Thinker" type personality emerges. In the end this person was eliminated along with the "Thinker" type and his campaign for conquest ended.

Once these three were eliminated from the bout the game came down to the remaining three archetypes.


The fourth type is the "Passive" type. This person lets things happen as they happen. Their decisions are based on what other people tell them to do as they try to learn the rules. Plays were often defensive and personal strategies were only formed when there was no input from others or when at risk of losing.

the fifth type is the "Pacifist" type. This person has a firm grasp of the rules but their play style revolves around making neutral plays rather than aggressive ones. This person focused more on staying safe rather than on winning.

the final type observed was the "Distracted" type. This person at first was more focused on the assignment than on the game itself often forgetting turn order and forgetting rules. As the game progressed however this person slowly started getting more into the game, noticing more details, as they went along. Their strategy was based on situational analysis and slowly began asking more questions and reading the fine print as the game went along.

In the end the winning strategy belonged to the "Distracted" archetype. As the game progressed this person was the one who adapted best to the rules and to the conditions of wining.While the others were slowly focusing on surviving this person began noticing small details within the power up cards and began amassing several abilities that were soon impossible to deal with.

Blog Post 1 - Street Fighter II: World Warrior - Reliving the Legacy

When perusing the list of titles of the arcade website there was one title that simply brought back that nostalgia factor of a 90's kid. Capcom's smash hit Street Fighter II. A simple programming error that allowed players to string a series of inputs together to form combinations of attacks became the first game that would define the genre for generations to come.

The game is still as fun and enjoyable as I remember and has been masterfully produced by its predecessor of the current generation Street Fighter IV. Starting up play I had chose to play as the time honored shoto-karate, fireball throwing, chin breaking upper-cut, tornado spin kicking Ryu. And just like back in the 90's this game is still as broken and unbalanced as ever.

Unfortunately since on the keyboard it lacked the control of the arcade joystick so controls definitely felt off. Executing special moves took some getting used to however the memories of dropping quarters into the machine rushed back. To be really honest I was never really good at the game. I knew how to do some special moves and such but the programming of the third level against the American Military Champion Guile once again proved to be my downfall.

This game is a cult classic that has evolved into one of the greatest e-gaming competitive scenes that is Street Fighter IV. With the recent announcement of Street Fighter V this game is surely one that will go down in history.