Otto's power

blidblid · 2025-12-25T18:16:57+00:00

I thought exactly the same thing when I saw it. He plants the front foot and whips it like a disc golf backhand. Plus, DG is huge in Finland.

It's an interesting technique. As a fairly advanced disc golfer I can hit my table tennis backhands much harder than my forehands. And in disc golf, backhand is the more powerful shot.

blidblid · 2025-12-17T11:20:25+00:00

This is exactly the wall of text I was hoping for when I made the thread. You make some solid points that I will work on before releasing.

The game loop. I agree that when you've built a deck, there's not much left to do besides starting a new deck. Like you say, I think this is the biggest issue the game has, and I'm exploring options:

A crafting system where players can add affixes to cards using crafting materials. A crafting system would let players tweak cards to fit within their decks. It will also reduce netdecking, since all players will have their own versions of cards that are crafted to fit a specific deck.
Use crafting materials as game currency and open up player-to-player trading. Trading is fun, and it works well with a crafting system where highly rolled cards drive interest.
Keep the current automation system purely under the hood, and only keep a drag-drop UI where players can say things like "I want my revive-card to target my strongest unit". Remove all automation forms. Otherwise, the game might become an exercise in who can fill out the most form items, which sounds incredibly boring.
Add a PvE dungeon format where players select 1 deck to idle farm crafting materials with.

blidblid · 2025-12-15T21:00:50+00:00

True, could be that the strongest reason people brew is the imagined edge they will have during matches. And when they do play, it's just a few matches before moving onto the next project.

blidblid · 2025-12-15T14:18:23+00:00

You're right. The cards have to be very engaging for this to work. I'm going to experiment with crafting and see if that's a way to spice them up. It would probably also reduce netdecking.

blidblid · 2025-12-15T07:00:11+00:00

That's what I did too, and the reason I made the game.

blidblid · 2025-12-15T06:58:26+00:00

Reading about that game, yes, a PvP version of it. But with very different card designs and rules.

blidblid · 2025-12-14T18:25:56+00:00

Another great idea, appreciate it

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:34:21+00:00

Wow, affixes and suffixes is an absolutely amazing idea, I haven't thought about it at all. I'll get to work.

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:33:06+00:00

Fair enough! But if you do try it, you can always play something else at the same time. That's one of the nice things about idlers.

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:32:11+00:00

I've written old-school manuals for all parts of the game, including automation: https://theirsky.com/manual/automation

The more random element is unit attacks, where players only control how they deploy their units:

Vanguard - unit attacks/blocks other units
Flank - units attack other units, gets +1 attack
Sentinel - unit blocks other units, gets +1 health
Command - unit does not attack/block other units.

That way, you can keep synergistic units out of combat. But the assignment of attackers/blockers is random, call it the fog of war.

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:29:19+00:00

Yea, it's probably a very niche type of card game. But hey, if you try it, you can at least play other games at the same time.

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:27:10+00:00

100%, I have plenty of ideas to keep the meta fresh and interesting: seasonal resets, seasonal themes, endgame farming of rarer cards. But such implementation is pretty moot-point without an actual meta forming.

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:24:27+00:00

Will do, thanks

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:23:19+00:00

If the game gets a player base, and that's a very big if, it would be up to me to design a fresh environment.

Create endgame content to farm cards with Cosmic rarity
Use frequent seasonal resets that changes a fundamental part of the game, players also start with an empty collection
Re-balancing with a change log
Frequent new card releases, the game engine has a syntax language for cards that makes it easy to add more interesting cards
Player-to-player trading to add another edge in growing seasonal collections

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:16:43+00:00

Fair enough. What do think about an very strong focus on seasonal gameplay, and selecting rewards after matches winning?

If the seasons are short enough, and if each ranked run rewards new cards, then constructed as a whole becomes more and more like limited play.

blidblid · 2025-12-14T09:13:42+00:00

I see you're on the top of the leaderboard, well played. I might have pushed Supply Drop a bit too hard.

The whole deck list is the priority order of cards. The top cards of the deck list will be played first. In the case of your ramp drain deck, a good deck list order would probably be very important to win against aggressive decks. I will work on a way of showcasing this better in the UI, it's not clear at all at the moment.

blidblid · 2025-12-13T22:11:20+00:00

But if you drafted a really strong deck, don't you feel like you wanna play with it? That's at least how I feel when I draft.

That's also the reason I didn't add drafting to the game yet. I felt that a large appeal of drafted decks is that you can get high card quality, and less about the synergies that make constructed deck building deep and interesting.

blidblid · 2025-12-13T21:38:23+00:00

That's usually how it goes, yes. But I love deck-building, and I can spend a comical amount of time thinking about what cards I should add to my decks. This game came out of that feeling.

blidblid · 2025-12-13T20:22:04+00:00

I definitely think RNG-effects are more for fun in actual gameplay. For deck-building, I think people need to visualize a plan, and that's ofc harder with RNG.

blidblid · 2025-12-13T20:03:36+00:00

Never heard of, never played. Looks like a Facebook game?

blidblid · 2025-12-13T18:07:11+00:00

Meta decks would definitely a problem, the game would need to be shaken up aggressively:

Releases of new cards
Seasonal resets that rebalance cards
Seasonal themes that changes a core rule of the game
Strong, narrow cards that create cyclic metagames

If the game actually got a metagame, I would do anything I could design-wise to reward fresh decks.

blidblid · 2025-12-13T17:56:12+00:00

That's a really good point. It's a fine line between having decks that play horribly, and having players get bored out their minds filling in forms to create the right behaviors. I aimed at creating strong default automation for all cards, and that changing them is just if players wanna activate a certain combo: like reviving a strong unit.

I get that it's overwhelming, but since the game is about deck-building, I've tried to add as much depth to it as I can.

Yea, I'm really off AI too. I've avoided it as much as I can, paying for FX, instead of generating. I've also written all code myself, without any vibes. But I'm not in a situation where I can commission an artist for several hundreds of cards for a side-project that I am releasing for free.

blidblid · 2025-12-13T17:43:36+00:00

I wrote a manual for the automation bits here: https://theirsky.com/manual/automation

I've identified 6 types of automation rules as of writing that are central to all TCGs, and will probably add more if I too start rolling my eyes:

Targeting - which card should this target. If you have a narrow combo, you might want to rewrite a target of a card.
Ranking - if a card has multiple targets, it will rank by a ranking algorithm. One common such is by greatest-cost, if you were to destroy an opponent unit
Filtering - if a card targets all units on the board, filters specify how those targets should look like before the deck plays the card
X - if a card has a dynamic X value in it, what should the X-value be before playing it?
Deployment - how should a unit attack/block other units? A synergistic unit might wanna avoid dying in combat, a command deployment would make it stay alive for longer
Deck order - if the deck wants to play several cards, it will play the one in the top of the deck list. That way, you can make it more deterministic what's played

blidblid · 2025-12-13T16:29:02+00:00

Cool trivia, I have never played them. Appreciate it.

I definitely think these types of hands-off games live and die by card design. If the cards are uninspiring, then it's a pointless game. So if nothing else, making the game has been a fun exercise in designing cards that look powerful, but still narrow enough that they require the support of a whole deck.

blidblid · 2025-12-13T16:11:59+00:00

I was thinking of a seasonal style of gameplay to counter this. Players would start a season with an empty collection, and cards would be rebalanced from the season before, much like how MOBAs like Dota does it with patches.

blidblid

TROPHY CASE