NFL Highlights: The Card Game

I’ve been toying around with various sports-based card games. After finally deciding to focus on football over baseball. I’ve gone through various phases of design, but I think I’ve finally centered on what I want the game to be. It didn’t take me too long to nail down the primary engine of the game. However, tallying yardage gained and determining the down and distance became increasingly difficult and not very enjoyable.

I increasingly scaled the game down. For a while, the game consisted of each team getting 8 offensive drives (2 per quarter). This was relatively reasonable. The initial drive of each quarter would start from the 50 yard line–with rules for punts and turnovers, etc. However, getting bogged down in the numbers, having mechanics for punts and kicking field goals, and keeping an enjoyable experience in mind became far too much.

Now the game, re-branded as NFL Highlights, simulates even more of a NFL game. Each team will still have 2 opportunities per quarter on Offense. Instead of starting from the 50, from a punt return spot, or from wherever their Defense stuffed the opposing team, now the Offense will start from a kind of unknown location by revealing a card from a neutral Down & Distance Deck. This card will give a scenario that the Offense is in (2nd and 10). If the Offense obtains a 1st Down from the first scenario, then they would draw another card from the Down & Distance Deck. If the Offense gains another 1st Down, then they are now considered to be in a 1st and Goal from the 10 yard line scenario. Therefore, three 1st Downs in a row grants you a Touchdown. If at any point during the first two attempts at 1st Down fails, then possession of the ball changes.

I’ve avoided going into the mechanics of the game for obvious reasons. However, if you’re interested in play-testing this game, let me know! The images above are from a previous version of the game, but could still be used with some minor tweaks. I’m assuming (you know what they say) that some of the companies that sell NFL trading cards would be able to license this game fairly easily. If they’re allowed to print pictures of the players already, then why not put some text on them and make a game out of it? With that lowering some of the cost, and the game being enjoyable, then the NFL could just be a big enough license to support a major card game.

Overlord, LCG/UCG/Co-OpCG/CampaignCG

Overlord is a special child of mine. After Panini announced its discontinuation of the Dragon Ball Z card game, I immediately began designing a fighting card game with original characters. This game has evolved in some marvelous ways. The current version is for 1-4 players (and could probably be played by more than 4). Overlord can be played cooperatively against a pre-constructed Adversary deck or against other players.

The setting for this game is a fantastical Colosseum-like arena. Overseeing the gladiatorial combat is the Overlord. At the end of each turn, players reveal a card from the neutral Overlord Deck (rotates with seasons of play and will have special editions for specific events); this card portrays the Overlord’s mood with the current fight. He could be bored and fire crossbow bolts at all of the combatants, he could drop a magic item into the arena for characters to compete for, he create obstacles, he could heal, etc.

Currently, I am leaning towards player’s decks being algorithmically generated. These decks would include a main character and could include one or more minor characters. Each character has their own stats and can only access certain weapons (the style or colors of this game). I have over a dozen weapons in the game right now, and while some characters can use more than one weapon, the variety of play-style in the game could be endless. The algorithm could select a character, or some characters, and then would generate the rest of the deck with cards playable by the character(s) therein, as well as neutral cards.

The game is played on a 4×4 squared grid. Players can move their characters throughout the grid and attack when in range. I like to think of this game as acting like some of the old tactics-like video games (Shining Force, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc.). If you would like to play test for this game, let me know!

Contact

You can e-mail me at CollisionPointBlog@gmail.com or PM me on Facebook (Tommy Andre).

This won’t be posted on the Retro page or the Meta X Community page because it has nothing to do with those pages, so if you’ve found this, thanks for reading!

-Tommy