My stress from work is finally ebbing, thanks to exercise and sleep. Amazing what those two will do.
I haven’t done much of anything creative in the past week, though; no writing or drawing, or even practicing Japanese. Though I did, in a burst of creativity, invent a game.
It’s sort of a cross between collectible card games and, well, Starcraft. I wanted to combine resource management with a collectible card game, to create a game with much less chance than a standard CCG.
It began with an observation of a friend playing Magic: The Gathering. He kept drawing land cards – the resources of the game – and quickly lost. When your resources are cards in your deck (which are drawn at random), you may have very few resources, or very many, and either situation can mean losing the game.
How about a game with established resources that shift over the course of the game? I envisioned a game where the players can shift counters among a few resources. So, you may have more or fewer resources as the game progresses, but that’s partly under your control.
I also dislike the idea of having a deck with cards you may never have access to. What if you have potential access to your entire deck, but everything has a cost? So, you can only bring out the cards which you can afford at any given time.
Thus I developed a basic set of rules for Chaos!, and made a tiny prototype. I tested it out over the weekend, and while I still need to create more cards and really play it through, I enjoy it.