Card Deck Design Problems

One of the things that frustrated me the most when working on mobile apps, as a paid contractor, were the various design discussions we would get into. I was the programmer on the project and always had some degree of separation from it, but that didn't really help because I'm just not the kind of person who can divorce himself from his work. If someone somewhere is making a stupid design decision, I tend to feel it like a knife to my gut.

In these discussions, a design change would be proposed, and it was often taken as though the change would only superficially affect the project. We'll "just" change this navigation flow and problem solved. We're in the clear.

Rarely was this actually the case. So many design decisions percolate through the whole system and touch many aspects of it. A change here can create the need to reconfigure the entire design to better support that change. If you're going to pretend every design change is superficial, then why bother doing any design? Just release a shitty product and go play golf or something. 

And so here I am with this game concept. I thought I was going to change just one aspect of the design, but it's actually touching many parts of the game, forcing me to rethink a big part of the game concept as a whole.

In this game, you are meant to build up a deck of cards with different structures you can place on your patio deck. The structures can be defensive like a turret, or they can boost resource production like a battery. I wanted to take a joke to the extreme and make a roguelike deckbuilder where the way you build the deck affects the way you build the deck and vice versa.

I already knew this was going to be a stretch before I started. I figured I would probably need to abandon the most ambitious aspects of the project, and I accepted this possibility.

Here is what I am learning. It seems that building a deck of cards that the player uses to build structures on a patio deck doesn't work for one big reason.

Many interesting structures you can build require more than one component to build them. You need the whole kit, not just a few pieces from the kit.

For example, if I want to build a flamethrower turret that is powered by gasoline I'm siphoning from a gas station, I need more than just the flamethrower turret. I need the pipes connecting it to the gas, and I also need the gas station.

If I want to electrify part of my deck to defend it, I need several parts. I need something to generate electricity, perhaps some solar panels. I also need metal postholes, metal joists, and a metal deck panel surface to electrify. I might need some kind of electrical transformer to turn the electricity from the solar panels into something that can shock enemies.

It's not just one building. It's a whole kit.

If the player is walking around picking up one card at a time, hoping to get the entire set, it could lead to a lot of games where the player never gets a chance to build up the deck because he didn't get lucky and pick up the right cards. This sucks and isn't fun.

It isn't necessarily bad so long as there are other ways for the player to get a foothold in this crazy deck building world.

If the player has other means of defending the deck, he can hold out for the better cards, slowly forming a strategy that snaps together at the right moment.

If some of the buildings are multi-purpose, the player could start getting some value out of them before picking up the other cards. For example, if the metal postholes can withstand attacks better, then it's an upgrade on the whole regardless of your plans to use them as an electrified deck defense. You would pick up the card for other reasons.

The more a building can be used in more than one way, the more compatible it is with card deck building, and that's the design challenge ahead of me now. I need to redesign the cards to be more like modules that fit with each other.

Or not. Maybe the problem is the card deck. Maybe it needs to go. If so, it would mean a really big redesign for the whole game. I would need to come up with a different way to do deck structures, which would probably end more like something you see in a traditional city builder. 

To me that feels less exciting, but if it's better for the overall design, then it's the right choice.