City-States

by dr_soda
Overall★★★★★★★★★★2.88
Fun★★★★★★★★★★2.64
Innovation★★★★★★★★★★3.23
Theme★★★★★★★★★★2.73
Graphics★★★★★★★★★★2.82
Audio★★★★★★★★★★1.64
Humor★★★★★★★★★★1.71
Mood★★★★★★★★★★2.72
Coolness★★★★★★★★★★100%
::About::

City-States is a strategy-based card game for 2 - 4 players. There's also a video game version if you'd like to play it on a screen. It's multplayer, but single-screen at the moment.

I worked solo on this, even though it was a Jam entry. I used proprietary libraries from the Unity Asset Store, and as such could not include source.

I'd urge you to give the actual physical card game a shot. There's a certain atmosphere you get from playing it at a table, with cards and tokens as it was conceived, rather than on a screen. If you would like to play the digital version and rate me based on that, by all means do so. :)

::Backstory::

"For centuries, a dozen city-states have vied for supremacy over the small island. This has all come to a head recently though, as a few particularly powerful rivals have emerged. Their conflicts are soon to be the fodder of legends."

Will you be a military leader, taking your enemies by force?
Will your shadowy secret society scheme their way to the throne?
Will your merchants and traders bleed your enemies dry of resources?
Will your abundant harvests and desirable land bring fortune and followers to your command?

Who will prevail?

Comments23

Lizzip30 Apr 2013, 07:18
Interesting idea
matthias_zarzecki30 Apr 2013, 08:07
With a PDF to print them out? Nice work!
dark_hunter30 Apr 2013, 08:42
Very interesting idea with the cards!
raincole30 Apr 2013, 09:22
It's a good idea to make to board game
myachin30 Apr 2013, 11:46
hi! good game.

but it's unbalanced for me. i played 2-player-version. very high dispersion! start combination on 95% defines who will win. we played about 15 games and changed rules for more strategic style of game:

- 36-cards instead 52 ( ace = 5, 6,7,8,9,10 )
- margin of victory is divided by 6 (instead 2)
recursive frog
recursive frogauthor30 Apr 2013, 14:12
Thanks for the detailed feedback myachin! The 2-player version with the original rules did bother me a bit but I didn't want to make multiple rule sets for different numbers of players. I'll give this a try.
Masadow30 Apr 2013, 15:36
Great card concept
Dark Acre Jack30 Apr 2013, 16:15
I give all analog games full points. Good work.
nixeldev
nixeldev1 May 2013, 10:28
Great concept, I'm a fan of tabletop games and enjoyed this :)
tiffi1 May 2013, 11:15
love the tabletop entrys cool idea
caranha
caranha1 May 2013, 13:24
Cool idea! This sounds like a fun quick card game, although a bit completely unbalanced ;-)

I won't have the chance to play with 3-4 people in a while, but it seems to me that the initial random setup has a very large influence in the game - how often do you get games that already start "won" or "lost"?

The game description in the manual is really good, but there is one thing sorely missing: The winning condition! Following the game description, it becomes obvious that the win/lose condition is to reduce an opponent's weakness to 0, but I really think that the winning condition of a game should be one of the first things spelled out in the game's manual!

I'll be sure to try this next time I'm on a party and report on the results :-) Cheers!
littleball
littleball1 May 2013, 20:53
It's good to see a game that extends the reach of the computer!
The coded part of the game runs nice and smoothly. Let's see if I can get some of my friends to learn how to play...
cakemonitor
cakemonitor2 May 2013, 06:51
Great to see a card game in Ludum Dare and I really like your implementation of the 3D card table! I think your computerised version needs a tutorial of some sort as it was quite confusing. But overall great work :)
TehSkull
TehSkull2 May 2013, 06:55
I like the idea of an analog LD game, but thanks for offering a Unity version to try out.

This seems like a very difficult game to keep track of on an actual table. I'd need a pen and paper or something.
recursive frog
recursive frogauthor2 May 2013, 07:03
TehSkull : It's pretty easy to track on a table, much moreso than in the computer game. I think I know a small adjustment that would make it easier to visualize but will have to wait to try it out with more people..
Shigor
Shigor2 May 2013, 08:22
Good idea. Very good idea, although it's not very balanced and too much depends on the starting hand players gets. Hadn't tried the more player version which would be probably a bit better, but good idea anyway (and these kinds of games usually suck when you have only two players anyway)
dremelofdeath
dremelofdeath3 May 2013, 06:31
Very interesting concept. The starting hands seem to unbalance the game a little, but overall, great work!
Madball3 May 2013, 17:23
Wow. I saw several game concepts in the LD, but this is the only one with a computer version. Well done.
Sometimes, when picking a cards to resolve a conflict, the picked card isn't shown. Also, I would like to see tokens and signs "Player 1" etc... on the table, not in corners.
runonthespot
runonthespot4 May 2013, 21:46
Impressed to see a card game implemented in Unity - technically I'm quite interested in how you model it internally. The game itself is interesting too, but I see the imbalance comments echo my own experience (admittedly only a couple of games). Nice variation from the usual LD fare :)
alexanderm0065 May 2013, 18:10
I like it, no one to play with :'(
Monxcleyr Productions6 May 2013, 04:48
Great card game concept - I appreciate you creating the web version for a quick test run. It may be a tad complex without a game board or stat-keeping resource of some kind when played in person, but I'll have to try it out!
bigbadwofl14 May 2013, 06:30
Pretty neat. Well done.

Thanks for taking the time to play my game! Btw, copied from the rules section of the site: 'Source code must be included'. I'm pretty sure I'm not required to upload content other than that.

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