Starchasers
Star Chasers is a strategic card battler where every card matters. Where countering your opponent’s strategy brings you closer to victory and each card defeated directly contributes to your success. This is made possible by two main mechanics in Star Chasers; The Morale System, and the multi-slot deployment system. These mechanics form the moat with which Star Chasers hopes to differentiate itself from the rest of the strategic card game crowd.
Inspiration
Star Chasers was born out of a simple design question. How do I add strategic value to each card played beyond what most current card game offerings provide? To tackle this query I first examined what popular card games were doing already to address this. There has been a trend to evolve effect-bearing cards past the play card resolve effect flow that has dominated the landscape by implementing “keywords” or effects that activate in specific scenarios and many cards even have more than one. For example, in the popular card game Hearthstone, the Unstable Ghoul card has two keyword effects. Taunt and Deathrattle; these effects synergize well with each other and have the added benefit of keeping the amount of text on cards low. Keywords also help make cards identifiable with certain strategies at a quick glance. No need to read through a card’s entire text box when you can recognize a few keywords and get a rough idea of what a card is trying to achieve. Different combinations of keywords and their general usage certainly add strategic value to card games but I was looking for something more.
In the Pokemon TCG the active Pokemon slot introduces an interesting wrinkle as well. The differentiation between the active slot and the bench slots adds another decision for players to manage both on the offensive and defensive end of the game. This is emphasized by the prize mechanic and the fact that different classifications of Pokemon are worth more prizes than others. This is a major strategic balancing act as there is no player health bar in the Pokemon TCG, or rather the player health bar is represented by the amount of prize cards you have remaining. Meaning that your opponent can influence the speed at which you approach victory. This strategic balance extends to deck building in the game as sometimes a deck filled with weaker overall cards (stat-wise) can lead to a more efficient path to victory. As you can force your opponent to have to spend several turns knocking out your single-prize pokemon effectively extending your “health pool”.
While most strategic card games focus on utilizing a traditional health pool or life point system a la Yu-Gi-Oh and Hearthstone I loved the element behind giving players the choice to affect their longevity in games with each card played. I find this way of balancing card power with the effect it will have on your opponent’s prizes to be a fantastic way of boosting player agency.
So where does all this strategic examination leave Star Chasers? Now that I have walked through my inspirations for the game I feel it will be easier to understand the systems and mechanics of Star Chasers.
The Star Chasers play area. The yellow slots indicate Commander slots, the purple slots are known as Crew slots and the dark grey slots are Fleet slots.
The Morale System
The Morale System was inspired by the Pokemon TCG’s prize system in which each time an opponent’s Pokemon was defeated it allowed you to pick up prize cards thus bringing you closer to victory. This direct line of feedback to one’s victory condition reinforces the gameplay loop and rewards player decisions with instant gratification. It also emphasizes the safety, placement, and strategic value of the cards played. In Star Chasers each player begins the match with 100 Morale Points (MP) and when this number reaches zero that player loses the match. Players lose Morale Points each time one of their ship cards is destroyed. The number of Morale Points deducted depends on the classification of ship which is denoted on each card and is broken down into three classes. Small (-5 MP), medium (-15 MP), and large (-25 MP) ships each are worth a different amount of Morale Points. This system also helps balance card strength by attaching a tangible value, or bounty in the eyes of your opponent, to each card.
Thematically the Morale System fits into the world of Star Chasers in the sense that both sides are engaged in intergalactic warfare where ships are being destroyed. This culture of warfare has an effect on the populace, in particular their morale.
Game Flow
In Star Chasers both players play cards onto their side of the playmat known as their fleet. Each fleet consists of six fleet slots with one Crew slot below each fleet slot and one Commander slot. Only the Commander type card can be played onto the Commander slot and only Crew type cards can be played onto the Crew slots. In addition Crew cards can only be played on activated Crew slots which are Crew slots below occupied fleet slots. Now this is where the Multi-Slot Deployment System comes into the picture. Each of the three ship classes take up a different amount of fleet slots when they are played.
For example, before playing a large ship card I need to make sure I have three fleet slots available. This in turn means that large ship cards immediately activate the three Crew slots below the large ship card. Medium ship cards take up two fleet slots and small ship cards take up a single fleet slot. This system also acts as a way to balance card strength by limiting how many cards of a certain type can be deployed onto your fleet at a time but also provide the benefit of activating multiple Crew slots at once.
Star Chaser is still in development as I am currently fleshing out the card roster and implementing online multiplayer functionality.