The first assignment was to create a card game that provokes or encourage a discussion about the “value” of things. I joined the course after this assignment was already complete, so unfortunately I had to do it alone instead of with a partner. When I began to think about the game, I consideretwo main questions:

  • How do I represent “value” in my game?
  • How do I get players to think about it?

In hindsight, I think I could have thought about which kind of values I want to represent. Economic value is a vastly different thing from subjective value, for example. Luckily, the game concept I came up with can be adapted to fit different themes.

I will present the rules first, and then some thoughts that went into creating them.

The Rules

This is a card game for two players. Players take turns playing object cards. Every player must play a higher card than the last one. If she can’t, the other player wins the played cards and begins a now round. Whenever a card is played, a replacement is drawn immediately. The game ends if the deck is empty and a player would begin a new round. The player who has won more cards wins the game.

Object Cards

Each object card represents a kind of object with a property. For example, this is a blob with tentacles:

a blob with tentacles

Here are some of the other ones:

other object cards

Every combination of kind and property exists exactly once.

Value Cards

The value cards are two rows of cards in the middle of the table. They show the value of the different kinds and properties of object cards. An object card is higher than another object card if it is the same or higher on both the kind and property scales. Here, the blob with tentacles is the most valuable card, and the spiked ball the least valuable one:

the value cards

Event Cards

After each round, the losing player draws a card from the event deck. These change the values for the next round, any decisions the card requires are made by the player who drew it. This allows for the losing player to create an advantage and maybe turn the game around.

How do I represent “value” in my game?

First, I needed a thing that has value. This being a card game, it was an easy fit to have cards that have different values. A straight-forward way to represent value is to have the players compare the values of different cards, and this reminded me of Frank’s Zoo. Here, players play cards of increasingly high value until nobody can play a higher card anymore.

How do I get players to think about it?

Well, I thought a good way to make people think about things is to make them more complicated. So, I made the value of the cards more complicated than just a simple comparison. To compare cards, you have to compare two values.

Also, I didn’t want people to get used to the value of different cards. This is why the game changes the values around regularly. It took a bit of experimenting to find out how often the values would change: In earlier versions, the values would change around all the time, there would always be a higher card and the game would never end.

Conclusion

This was a fun exercise. The game is still a little rough around the edges. More playtesting and finetuning, especially of the event cards, would probably make it a lot more fun. Better theming could help too: Maybe it could send a message if the kinds were changed to vehicles, food and similar things; properties to fancy or environmentally friendly; and events to climate change broadcasts (increases value of environmentally friendly cards).

Still, I am pleased with the results. I like the way the value cards serve as a reminder, but can easily be moved around. And I got to draw a blob with tentacles. Looking forward to the next challenge!