DeckWorld Overview

Theme: In DeckWorld, the player starts out by becoming self-aware. In what seems to be a vacuum, the player suddenly realizes his/her mind's existence. The player has 3 cards in his/her deck, and they represent the very basic cognitive capabilities of the newly self-aware mind. There doesn't seem to be any physical world, no space and no matter, just a lonely mind trying to understand what it can do. This is the premiss of DeckWorld.

Mechanism: As many deckbuilders from the board game community, DeckWorld uses the standard mechanism for turns: draw cards, use them all or discard them, then it is a new turn. However, DeckWorld aims to take full advantage of the computer's capabilities by adding mechanisms that would be tedious and unpractical in a physical board game or card game. One such main mechanism is the concept of exhaustion and cooldowns on cards. Every time you play a card, its cost increases by its exhaustion value. Every time you choose to rest from playing a card (discarding it without effect), the cost decreases by its cooldown cost. Changing the cost of cards every time you use them would never be viable, and probably not even doable on physical cards, at least not in the long run. But for a digital implementation, it works perfectly.

The 3 starting cards are all you need to get going. There is one card to increase your power, which is the main economical currency in DeckWorld. Another card increases your knowledge, another important currency which is used to unlock more cards. The last card is used to buy new cards into your deck. Buying cards may cost some of your will. So, the game revolves around the three basic resources:

* Power - what you pay to play cards.
* Will - what you pay to buy new cards.
* Knowledge - what makes you discover and unlock new aspects of the game.

Apart from these, there are many more resources, but the only additional one you know of is XP (experience). You gain 1 XP every time you have gone through your draw deck and need to reshuffle your discard pile into your deck. When reaching enough XP, you level up, which mainly increases your maximum limit of your resources (power and will).

Theme: The player explores its thoughts and try to formulate new thoughts (buying new cards) and become more efficient in its capabilities. As the mind reaches new insights, its powers are expanded and the world of possibilities opens up incrementally. Over the cause of the game, the player will grow from the first weak mind which always needs to rest, into a potent god of the universe, everexpanding its powers toward omnipotence.

Mechanisms: Since DeckWorld is an exploration game, not much is revealed from the start. You have no idea what the game will unfold, and you have no idea just how much control you will be able to get over the world. You also have no idea what the goal is. And you have no idea for what purpose you exist yourself. All of this is thought to be revealed as the game goes by. My intention is to make the game as unscripted as it can be while still steering players towards some key elements of the game. Hopefully, this steering will be so subtle that the player feels ever in control of his/her destiny.

So, here comes the spoilers.

Almost anything you have seen in card games over the years will be possible to do in DeckWorld, and even more. In the beginning, all cards are action cards: you simply pay for them, do what they say, and then discard them. Rinse and repeat. Depending on your choice of research, you will unlock cards that stay in play for several turns, cards that are actually permanent, cards that tamper with your discard pile, cards that create new piles of cards, cards that stack other cards, cards that collect resources, cards that introduces triggers and buffs that apply to other cards, cards that have restrictions, random elements, hidden development, ways to eliminate cards from your deck, create new decks, switch which deck you're playing with, merge cards, create your own cards, purge effects off of cards, develop the effects on cards, even link cards to other cards so that when one is played, the other is affected, regardless of where it is, etc. Each research node in the research tree will unlock several new cards and mechanics of the game, expanding the player's freedom and potential.

Theme: At some point, the player will realize that it is not at all in a vacuum, but that there is a space in which it floats. All of a sudden, there is a world to explore, although not a physical world, but a seemingly endless void penetrated by energy fields which the player can learn to harvest power from. Invisible energy structures can ultimately be tracked, and the player may find relics from the world's creation long ago. Navigating this space, the player can develop a deeper knowledge of the structures that build up the world, and possibly use this knowledge to alter the world.

Mechanisms: This far, all the game has been about affecting your own deck of cards, which represents the player's mind. You develop your mind and your potential, explore different ways to do so efficiently. But when this time comes, you realize that you are an agent which can affect your surroundings. This will eventually lead to you becoming a creative god, creating matter which you turn into soil, and voilá, you're building the physical world yourself! And not just the physical world, but by sharing your life essence, you can even create fellow spirits that will keep you company and help you with your work.

Theme: As for all living things, the existential questions must sooner or later be asked. Why am I here? Am I alone? What is my purpose? Now that you have created land in the void and its mountains declare your glory, what now? You stop in your tracks. What is that over there? An isolated island further away in the void. Did you create that? What are those things crawling upon it? Life? Physical life? Who came up with that?

Mechanisms: DeckWorld is supposed to be a solo experience, but I intent to create a roboust AI system to handle several other players. Naturally, when the players are just immaterial minds they will hardly notice eachothers' existence. However, when they begin creating and moving and possibly eventually incarnating themselves into physical beings, they will be much harder to ignore. With the vast research tree and possibilities of DeckWorld, creating an AI will be tough, but hopefully it will mean that different AI players will be diverse in their knowledge, capabilities, and strategies. Hopefully, the awe of what other players are doing will strike the player with equal parts admiration and envy.

Overall, this is the largest twist of the game, when it slowly transforms from being a pure card game, to introduce space, to matter, to world-building, onto a pure strategy game. Still driven by cards, but a strategy game. And depending on the paths you take, this strategy game will look very different from other players' games. One player has almost abandoned his deck completely in favour of permanent abilities incorporated in his avatar, into which he incarnated. That may look like a 3rd person RPG game, where - depending on the paths taken - the main character can be anything from a warrior to a wizard to a monster. Another player never takes physical form, but acts in its own power over the physical domains using his cards. That player is playing a card-driven strategy game.

What's the goal?

In the end, what is the goal of the game? Well, the journey is pretty much the goal, really. A lot of things to explore, especially things that tweak the way the game is played so that it changes character. I do feel like an exploration game should come to the answers of the existential questions it brings up. In the end, there should be a way to discover why you exist in this world, why it is built like it is, and what your purpose is. Ultimately, I as the designer, am the author of said purpose. I lean towards a very simple and classical approach where the goal is simply to be the only remaining player, by hunting down and eliminating all other players. Still, when the goal is reached, there should be some concluding story. It hasn't been set in stone yet, but my current thinking is that when one player has conquered all other players, his powers are becoming so great that he cannot even himself contain this power. In what may be called a "Big Bang", this spirit is split into 7 new spirits void of knowledge, with the newly-attained self-awareness, so that the player will leave the game with the sense that this was exactly what happened before he himself started the game, and that DeckWorld is lost in an eternal loop.

But again, why settle with one specific ending? Why not allow players to "win" the game in different ways? Since it is a solo experience, there could be many different ways it could end, and many different goals you could approach which would end the game. Maybe you become one with the energy building up the world (like Brahman). Maybe you can separate your land from all other players' influences to live for eternity with your people in perfect joy (similar to the Christian view of escatology). Maybe you manage to invent time-travel and go back to the foundation of the world and stop it from even starting. The possibilities are endless. But right now, I feel like this question can be pushed into the future :)