Since I've first laid down the first ideas for a card game about fighting video games, I've kept working on it and I've now ran my first playtest with a friend of mine. It went as good as I could expect for a first draft.

My main objective was for the core game loop to be as smooth as possible while giving players choices, and it pretty much delivered. As it stands the game lacks content and balance, but it's more easily remediated than a critical flaw in the mechanics themselves.

One hindrance of the playtest that didn't have anything to do with the game itself was the distance. We did it over Jitsi Meet, using a custom website I quickly whipped up to have all the cards available to read and having a rudimentary deck and hand system, as well as a shared spreadsheet for the board. It was playable, but the latency to figure out what each card does was unnerving in this context while it would be way easier in real life with physical cards.

I'd like to create a fully-integrated version of the game for smoother remote playtest, does anyone know about an online custom card game open framework I could use to that extent? I only know about BoardGameArena Studio at the moment.

#gamedesign #boardcame #cardgame