The infamous first Post! news - Cards of Void

Greetings Stranger!,

Timo and I started working on Cards of Void as a students project. We are trying to realize something, we always wanted to make and found a way to combine what we both love most. The mixture of digital Card Game and Dungeon Crawler is a strange one and I'll try to explain it the best I can.

Basically you have your traditional Indie Rouge Lite. Randomly generated dungeons combined with permadeath, but we added another component to the formula: Instead of random item drops, which vanish with every run, you have a set of persistent cards. Before every run you create your deck with your own set of cards and chose your character. After that you enter the dungeon and try to get as far as possible in the game until you die. The game is in real time, you controll your character with "WASD", lockon enemys with the mouse and use your cards similar to spells from different games of the genre, expect everytime you use a spell, that spell is lost and you draw a new card from your deck. Another distinction is that death is not the end, the cards you found in your run, will stay with you forever. After death you will create a new deck or adjust your existing decks and the thing repeats itself.

This type of gameplay brings advantages for the player and the designer. First of all, the player can chose the way he wants to play. We are trying to make the cards as diverse as possible, so there is a play style for everyone. Secondly, the player is forced to optimize his decks, which gives him an obvious goal to play this game. The more he plays, the more choice he has, the better his decks become. Thirdly, the player will always see his mistakes in deckcreation, as long as the game is designed in a hard but fair way (which is obviously a challenge, but one of the main goals we set for this game).

We are trying to design the cards and the game so that thought in the deckcreation and in the use of the cards is needed to beat the game. Synergy between cards is important to us, but we don't want to force players to pick a certain card, just because there is no other choice (Hearthstone does this for example). The tactical use of the cards comes with their effects, with the enemys you are fighting and with your own status, missplays are punished fast and could ruin the whole run.

I know the screenshots we posted look highly disappointing. We just recently got back our artist and worked only with prototype art so far. It's what worries us a lot lately, but we are improving every day and soon this game will look way better. Bear (or Fat Dog) with me here, our Art Style is in the works! ;-)

The game has been in development for about 2-3 Months now and we plan to release in 3-4 Months, obviously this could all go terribly wrong and we will release in a year or, lets hope not, never. A playable version for you is hopefully coming soon. I'll try to post at least weekly updates, but my time management is awful, so things might get delayed.

If you have any questions, feedback or anything, please post in the comments or email/tweet us :-*.

so far,
Sebi, the smallest part of World Porn Desperadoes.
(Please excuse my terrible English)