Artifact system

I may have solved a part of my puzzle. I wanted this game to have many deckbuilding elements while also literally being a game where you build a deck. I want the deck building to affect the deckbuilding. That's the joke and the main hook.

But I was being too constrained in my thinking. I thought deckbuilding (not the patio) could only come from the player making a card deck, but there are other forms of deckbuilding I have seen in other games I like.

One of those games is Peglin. It has an artifact system that creates an extra layer of deckbuilding to all of the other deckbuilding elements in the game.

Artifacts typically apply some kind of global bonus, so you don't pick them up all that often. You usually get them after a big boss fight or clearing a major area of the game.

Artifact bonuses stack on each other, which can lead to a situation where the player gets overpowered just from having the right global bonuses.

Artifacts solve a key problem with the design. Because you don't really interact with artifacts all that often, they don't need to visually signal all that much. For example, you could have something like the Brooch of Waldo's Good Mussery. It looks like an ordinary gem, but when you read the text you learn all about the bonus you get.

This solves the problem I described in earlier my posts. Turrets are visual. They need to visually communicate what they do because you're going to have a lot of them and you're going to interact with them all the time.

Not so with artifacts. You will look at them from time to time, but the bonus is global and you can usually remember it. The descriptive text does the heavy lifting.

Rogue Deck Builder will have artifacts. Each of them will give a bonus that relates back to the way you build your patio deck. The deckbuilding affects the deckbuilding.

Here's an example:

You could get the Balustrade of Defensible Joists, which confers a small defense multiplier that is calculated from your longest joist.

Here's another:

The Golden Grill of Large Deck Panel, which gives a fire rate bonus to all turrets based on the largest deck panel you have built.

Others can be more simple in nature. GLH, a spray can of fake hair that permanently increases the player's malding meter by one.

I'm happy with this, and I will start putting it into the game after I finish the other design changes I've discussed this week.