Today I Started work on fleshing out the rules of a card game.
So far it's a trick taking or point based game based on planting and harvesting seeds on a planet where the seasons are random.
Currently It's a 2 player game with a standard deck of cards.
The Face Cards represent the seasons. You plant during one season and harvest during another. Seasons are grouped by suit color. So you plant clubs on a club face card and harvest when a spade face card becomes active and vice versa. The player with most harvested points wins. Points are currently the number value of the card.
Setup:
Remove face cards from deck and shuffle the separated decks.
With the shuffled face cards make 4 piles between the players.
Each player draws 5 cards from the number deck
Choose a player to start.
Each turn consists of the following phases:
Change season
Harvest Points
Plant cards
Draw Up to 5 card limit.
Next Up: Flesh out each action with more explanation.
Quick name change of the game due to poor research on my part :D
I'm just gonna call it Cropped for now. But more on rules.
Currently the last few playthroughs I've done have yielded fairly even results.
Even as in each players scores are even. So the game feels just like you are laying down cards and then sometimes getting to pick them up.
My guess currently is that for a 2 player game the changing of the when you can plant and when you can harvest is too even. As it is I've played with throwing out points when the same season gets played or extending the season allowing you to plant more before a harvest time is triggered. Both seem to feel the same. Theres not very much tension in it.
So changing seasons per turn feels a little too regular. I'll need to do something to make the season progress a little longer.
Ideas include leveling the season so if a higher level season comes along it allows you to plant more. If its lower level you have to replant and lose all your current seasons. I also might need to make changing seasons a between round activity instead of it being the beginning of a players turn. Therefore it's less frequent and everyone gets to play in each season.
The previous order of play was change season, harvest, plant, draw up.
I tried a variation where you harvest before you change the season which felt like it was little more playful but didn't add much variation.
i do think you should harvest plant then draw up especially if changing the season gets removed from order.
when its come to planting I think it might be nice if you there was order in which you could plant points. This should add some risk. I'm not sure if if starting high to low or low to high would work better. I suppose I'll play with that tomorrow! I imagine there is some balance between one and the other and making those points put you in direct competition for that plot of land with the other player.
Whelp I think thats it for tonight
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Thanks :)
@adit I have never heard of it before! I just jotted the beginnings of it down during the last global game jam.
Now I'm going have to play it! Thanks for the link.
Love your watercolors :D
Have you played the board game Seasons? http://amzn.com/B008A2BA90
It shares the same core concept of planting and harvesting. Your game sounds easier to carry around though.