Short Summary
The Cards We’re Dealt is a card game that is meant to illuminate social imbalances by the abilities or disabilities of certain characters within the game. It consists of mainly one mechanic of taking and passing cards to add up the most points, but players’ actions are limited by the character that they assume.
Design Process & Thought Process:
Iterative Design:
As this is the game I chose to present as my final game, I did a lot of iterating on the design, mechanics, rule book, and flow of the game. I went through three of four rounds of rule rewording and especially over the design and wording of the cards, mini rules and game box.
I faced challenges when it came to the practical side of printing and minor design issues of color and details. This just took a lot of trial and error to work out flaws.
The first version with simple rules and a deck of classic cards:
And then I created special characters with specific abilities:
Then I made a rulebook with the design but then after that decided to consolidate the whole game into a little playing card size – so made the rulebook mini and with a special mini rule card (pictures are down in the game pieces section)
Game Mechanics:
Turns consist of taking a card from the hand passed to you to place face down in front of you.
Keep passing around the hands until the cards run out. If during the round you cannot take a card due to your players rules, still take a card and put it next to your actual hand on the table in front of you which acts as a discard pile (which does not add to your score)
each player can attempt to gain more points or decrease other players’ points by what is laid out by the rules of each Character card
- Player Goals: Players are trying to get the most points by collecting the highest value cards they can based off of their characters.
- Gameplay Sequence:
- Game Board & Components:
The cards which are the main catalysts of the game mechanics:
The custom rule book:
Rulebook & Playtesting:
- Rulebook Sample:
Game Reflections:
I learned a lot from making this game. It was a very fun process of coming up with a game concept around inequality and then creating an aesthetic for that message. Iterating all the different pieces made me think deeper about the message and how everything would work together. In the future, I would want to add more dynamic to the gameplay and continue to expand upon the illustration and design.