Anatomy of a Card (Part 2)

Welcome back to our blog! Following on from Part 1, in this post we will talk about some other components of the cards in the Quantum Rift Adventure Card Game and discuss why we have positively embraced the use of dice in our game when the prevailing view seems to be that the output randomness they can bring increases the luck factor too much.

Without further ado, let’s check out the Hyvryx Predator again, but this time with some annotations about what its icons, numbers and words mean.

Today’s first component up for discussion is the Type, which we skipped right over in Part 1. Whereas Sabrien Reed is a “Hero Unit”, this card is a “Unit – Hyvryx”.

The main implications of this difference are: as a Hero Unit, Sabrien Reed will already be in play at the start of the game and he has Vitality, which roughly represents the number of times he can become damaged during his adventure; as a basic Unit, Hyvryx Predator will enter play during the game and has no Vitality, so it will be destroyed if it is already damaged when it should become damaged (e.g. after being defeated in combat).

Although we already covered it in Part 1, it’s worth returning to the Game Text at this point. It should come as no surprise that Sabrien and the Hyvryx Predator have different effects in their Game Text to build on top of (or override) the basic rules of the game. While we can’t delve into the second effect today, it is worth looking at the first ongoing effect that conditionally gives a bonus on your Attack rolls for the Hyvryx Predator: whenever that +1 bonus applies, an Attack roll of 3 will also be considered a success (at default difficulty setting).

This leads nicely onto what we consider to be one of the key innovations in the Quantum Rift Adventure System: the Rift Number! Whilst dice can bring many positives to a game (variety, surprise, excitement, the simple joy of rolling them, etc.), the impact of using them to determine critical outcomes can sometimes work against the strategic element and limit the influence of your decisions as a player; this can then lead to loss of engagement and a feeling, at times, like too many things are outside your control and purely at the mercy of luck instead. To address this potential issue, while maintaining the benefits of using dice in the first place, we have engineered a synergistic connection between our cards and dice in the form of the Rift mechanic!

So what exactly is the Rift mechanic? Well, that would have been the subject of a future post but we anticipated it would not work out well for us to keep stringing you along, so we decided to make a change aiming for a better outcome. Coincidentally, this is also what it means to Rift in our game, where you can take advantage of a god-like power to witness what would have happened and then choose whether to make some change with a more preferable outcome in mind. More specifically, in terms of gameplay, this is implemented by offering the player a choice to improve any dice roll by discarding a card from hand to add its Rift Number to that roll. (Yes, fate really is in your hands, twice over, in the dice you roll and the cards you might Rift with!) Aside from being able to boost your dice rolls, there is one other major benefit of the Rift mechanic, but that is being saved until our next blog post … no matter how many cards you discard to try to change our minds!

The final component we wish to cover today is the Card Pool. Within the Quantum Rift Adventure System, each card is assigned to a card pool, which determines whether and where it might appear in a particular adventure. In the case of our first adventure, the Sabrien pool provides cards that are controlled by the player, to aid Sabrien Reed on his adventure, while the Hyvryx pool provides cards controlled according to the game rules, representing enemy forces encountered on the way. As you might expect, each of our four Heroes has their own card pool, highlighting their strengths and background, but there are also Basic and Universal pools featuring cards that can appear regardless of the Hero or the specific adventure.

Speaking of adventures, I’m afraid we have reached a junction in ours for today. Where you go next is entirely up to you, but we hope you will return in the near future to continue learning about our adventure card game and the wider Quantum Rift Universe. See you soon!

Anatomy of a Card (Part 1)

Hot on the heels of the card reveals, we can now start breaking down each card into its component parts. Let’s start with Sabrien Reed, one of the four Heroes that will appear in the first adventure created with the Quantum Rift Adventure System (QRAS).

Since this is a developer blog, as opposed to a rulebook, we’ll skip over some parts and focus on what should hopefully be the most interesting to hear about!

Let’s start with Quanta! Every playable card in the QRAS has one or more Quanta symbols shown under its Type. In Sabrien’s case, you can see he has 1 Red, 1 Green and 2 Yellow. What each colour means is actually beyond the scope of this post, but we can confirm that the group of Quanta symbols shown under the Type almost always represent the cost that must be paid to play the card. (If you’re wondering how you might pay this cost, I’m afraid that’s also the subject of a future post!)

Next up, we have Attack and Defence, which are used during the Combat Phase to determine which of the characters involved should become damaged or destroyed. Unlike some other games you might be familiar with, this goes beyond simple comparison of values and involves rolling some dice! Specifically, you will roll a number of six-sided dice equal to the Attack value, aiming to have more successes than the defender’s Defence value. (At the default difficulty setting, rolling 1-3 is considered a failure and 4-6 means a success.)

The final part of Sabrien’s card we wish to talk about today is the Game Text. As you can see, he has an ongoing effect that references a Quanta symbol for reducing the cost of some Action cards when you play them and another effect that can boost Sabrien’s Defence value if you can get at least one success when performing a Quanta Test. Again, it’s a bit early to go into full details of what this means, but you can rest assured there will be dice involved!

Hopefully our reluctance to go into lots of details has not been too frustrating for today, and your curiosity to find out more will bring you back in the near future. Whether you are a fan of dice in your card games or not, you will definitely want to read our next post, which will cover the innovative ways we have integrated dice into our card game to maximise excitement without compromising strategy and skill.

Cards!

Although we are still in the early stages of development of our new adventure card game, we have arrived at the point we can share a couple of cards.

Over the coming weeks, we will reveal the meaning of specific parts of each card, so stay tuned if we have (as planned) piqued your curiosity! Until next time …