When I introduced Card City Critters yesterday, I mentioned that we’d have three starter decks available for play at Boston FIG. Starter decks might not be quite the right word. It’s best to think of them as a bit like choosing a starter Pokémon.
Today, I’ll be introducing the first of the three, Beach Day!
First though, before you decide if sun, sand and seagulls is your style of play, let’s talk a a little bit about how Card City Critters is actually played.
Basic (Card) Gameplay
A game of Card City Critters is played over a set of turns. Both you and your opponent start with 15 life, and the first player to reduce their opponent’s life to zero wins! You do this by calling up critters to fight for you, and casting spells to power them up, or slow your opponent down.
We’ll talk about critter cards first.
All Critters have a cost to play. That’s the number in the upper right hand corner of the card. Sand Dollar has a cost of 2.
The easiest way to tell that a card is a critter is the big number in the circle under the art. That’s the critter’s power. Sand Dollar has a power of 2.
Power is how much damage a critter can do when it attacks. For a card like Sand Dollar, that’s only 2 points of damage! It’s not a lot, and since in Card City Critters only one critter can attack per turn, it would take a long time to defeat someone with just Sand Dollar.
But Sand Dollar has one more thing going for it, and that is its ability. The first time you tuck a card each turn, that ability triggers, and lets you draw an extra card! But what exactly is tucking a card?
Building up at the Beach
In Card City Critters, a lot of different cards use tucked cards. But the Beach deck is the one that cares the most about them. So much so that even their most basic little guys use tucked cards.
The first big thing that tucked cards do is provide a buff to power. Forecaster Crab starts out as 0, but since it tucks a card under itself when it enters, it immediately become a 1 power critter.
Other cards in the Beach Deck use tucked cards to activate effects, such as this Seagull Crab.
It snatches tucked cards off other critters in order to make itself more powerful! Fun Fact: this trick is shared by Seagulls, who as a group, like to snag things from other critters to perform effects, or buff themselves. The pinnacle of this is probably the Queen Gull.
Even the spells in Beach Day tuck cards!
Packing Up From The Surf and Sun
Of course, Beach Day is just one of the starter decks. If you find that tucking and untucking cards is a little too complex, you might have a better time growing and rearing mighty dragons with Dragon Hatcher. Alternately, if you really want to challenge yourself, you might be the perfect person to prune the twisting and tangled Homegrown garden deck.
Want to learn more about these other two? Keep an eye on the blog over the next few days.
For the last half a year, I’ve been working a project called Card City Critters. And now, it’s ready to revealed. And if you live around Boston, or are willing to make the trek down, you can play it in a week from now at Boston FIG.
(Please imagine the Jurassic park theme played with a kazoo)
Card City Critters is a collaborative design between myself and Max Seidman. It’s an event-only experience that we’re calling a Live Action Uncollectable Card Game. In it, you’ll get a deck, earn cards to improve that deck, and face off against a variety of challenging non-player opponents (me and my friends in funny hats).
Games are fast, frantic and fun! They take 8-10 minutes for experienced players, and use 15 card decks. After each game, you’ll earn booster packs that you can use to upgrade your deck, and improve your chances of winning.
We’ll be running our first public version of the game at the Boston Festival of Indie Games, on December 7th. In it, players will be able to select from one of three starter decks, face off against up to 4 NPC’s with their own wacky play styles, and finally attempt to stop the Magnate, and his Scheme Engine from taking over Card City.
Quick FAQ’s
Where can I play it?
We’ll be debuting the first version of the Card City Critters at Boston Fig on December 7th. Since it’s an event only experience, this will be the first chance for the general public to try it out. Internally, we’re considering this our first public Alpha version of the game!
Do I have to play against other players?
No. While decks in Card City Critters can be played against other players, it’s primarily a PvE experience, with players facing off against non-player characters (NPCs).
How far in development is it?
We’re very proud of our underlying card game engine in Card City Critters, and believe it’s an incredibly fun game. That said, we’ll still likely be changing quite a few things in the game as development advances, and it’s also possible that the whole game gets a new name at some point in the future.
We’re at the point where we think the best way to improve the game is to start running the experience, and learn from watching people play!
Also, as I’ll note below, we’re still working on how to actually make money off it.
Likewise, the art/art style are currently placeholders. Fun placeholders! Hand drawn placeholders! But placeholders nonetheless.
How much will it cost?
At Boston FIG, it’ll be free with admission to the festival. In the future, we expect to charge for the event. Currently, we don’t ever plan to sell cards, decks, or boosters separately from the events—it is an uncollectable card game, after all.
Will I like it?
If you like collectible card games or trading card games you’ll probably have a good time with Card City Critters. While absolutely anyone can play it, it’s probably at it’s best if you’re already a little familiar with the genre. That said, we’ve got versions of the experience for folks at all levels of getting into card games. Roleplaying/LARPING is not required.
Is this a TCG/CCG?
We don’t plan for it to be.
Our plan is to eventually sell entry to events, not sealed product. When you collect cards from previous events, you’ll be able to bring a few cards to future events, but this won’t give you a big mechanical advantage. Instead, it’ll let you bring in 1 or 2 favorite cards. In addition, while we’re very pleased with our underlying card game, we see it mostly as being played in events, not as a standalone or separate game.
There are a bunch of great experiences you can have playing TCG’s and CCG’s, but we’re interested in distilling those down into our game, not competing in the space.
We’re early enough in development that this could change. What exactly we end up selling is still up in the air, but we don’t plan to be competing in the TCG space with the game.
I want to get involved in playtesting/follow project development/learn more. Where can I do that?
The best way to learn about future events is to join our mailing list! If you’re very curious, and would like to learn more, you can also join our Discord here. We’ll be recruiting playtesters from our Discord, and announcing events on the mailing list.
Finally, I’ll be talking about each of the player decks, and a bit of their background over the next week, so keep your eyes on the blog if you’re curious!
What a strange egg. I wonder what might hatch from it?
Woo. It’s been a week of holiday, and unpacking things, and just general work. As such, this is going to be less of a play by play account, and more of a semi-lucid sequence of things that occurred at Unplugged.
So let’s get to it!
Indie Games Night Market
This was the second year of the Indie Games Night Market at PAX Unplugged. Last year, I snuck in and chatted with a bunch of folks about the process, and the games they had at the market. This year, though, I was behind the counter with Max Seidman helping him demo and sell the game Skyline. As a result, I didn’t have any time to actually buy or play games from the night market, so this is going to be a bit of an abbreviated section.
Things were much smoother this year, as the whole area been turned from last year’s queue space into a series of microbooths.
2025 IGNM Booth Layout
This solved some of the big problems from last year, but introduced a few of its own. Folks could queue up for some for the games they were most interested in, and anyone who showed up later still had a chance to browse.
The downside was that unless you were choosing to browse, I think it was harder for folks to see as much of the market as last year. Also, the non-sidescrolling structure meant that whenever a queue did form, I occasionally had to shout over folks’ heads to ask if anyone just there to buy Skyline instead of demoing it.
Additionally, the #IGNM hashtag on BlueSky has a bunch of folks sharing their pictures of the event, if you want a sense of the vibes. I’ll be honest, after setup and pitching the game for an hour and half, I didn’t have the presence of mind to take pictures.
First Look
I spent a lot more time this year than I usually do at First Look, up on the third floor. First Look is where PAX will bring in either newly released, or yet to be released games (usually form Essen), and have them available for play.
The first game we played was Magical Athlete. I liked this one. It’s a very simple roll and move, with a drafting component. Is it a high skill game? No. For me, the joy of the game is in watching everyone else lose it when Lady Luck turns against them. In what’s becoming a running theme of this writeup, I suggest Dan Thurot’s review if you want some more in depth info.
This was followed up by Take Time. It’s a co-operative card placing game, probably most similar to The Crew, and is all about inferences and hidden information. I’m not great at these sorts of games, but my friends who were seemed to be a little underwhelmed by it. Whether that’s mediocre gameplay, or the game’s complete lack of anything resembling a narrative, who can say.
Stem and Branch also goes kinda light on the narrative. It’s about raising the animals of the Eastern Zodiac, but really it’s about playing cards on a board to gain victory points. I didn’t parse the game’s actual strategy until pretty late into it, and spent most of it just making whatever move I could on my turn. It’s not bad, but it’s not incredible. The art for all of the Zodiac animals, however, is absolutely incredible. Loved that bit.
Slime Artist is Pictionary with play-dough, or perhaps silly putty. There is more to it than that, and perhaps a slightly different set of scoring incentives in that you want only one person at the table to recognize your creation. But if you don’t like sculpting or molding, you will not like this game. Fortunately my mother is an art teacher, and I have played with a lot of clay so I do like it.
Finally, there was Subliminal. I should note that I don’t really see words as being constructed from letters, so word games aren’t really my thing. Still, Subliminal isn’t really about spelling. It let me down anyway. I did not like Subliminal. The weird abstract art is the best thing about it, and everything else is pretty mid.
PAX Rising
I spent less time at PAX Rising then I would have liked to, but I do want to give a few quick shoutouts to some things I saw there.
First up, the Brightcast folks had a booth there, and were selling Brightcast! I love Brightcast, and while I missed the Brightcast tourney that was held at the event, I hold in my heart of hearts that I would have won if I’d played. Or at least not gotten knocked out in the first round. Also, they found my missing card box containing pretty much every promo I’d picked up that weekend when I left it near their booth, and got it back to me so that was hugely appreciated.
Next up was Krampusnacht, a game about playing as various dark versions of Santa Claus to capture children to sacrifice to the devil. This was one I played more for the vibes than the gameplay, as it’s a bit too “take that” for me. Still, the public domain art selection is incredible, I loved getting to see it.
Collectible Card Games
It wouldn’t be PAX without a new crop of CCGs, and this year was no exception. I’ll likely have more to say about Riftbound in a few weeks, so for now I’ll leave it out of my description. But as much as I hate to say it, I think it’s probably pretty good, if not hugely innovative. Instead, I’ll quickly cover the other two.
Cookie Run Braverse Trading Card Game is interesting, and yes, that is its full name. I don’t hate or love it, and found myself mostly bemused by the few rounds I played. To give credit where it’s due, it’s the first TCG in a while that I’ve seen that uses no external components to the deck, instead having what feels like a very interesting win condition in its break system. Thematically, I do not care about Cookie Run. I just don’t. Its weird combo of Pokemon and Magic’s resource systems was a bit hard for me to parse at first. After playing with its starter decks, I didn’t feel like the game offered much of note.
OverPower on the other hand is much more interesting. It falls much closer to Flesh and Blood, or Universus—games I have noted in the past I just don’t have a good time with. However, something about OverPower clicked for me. There’s no creatures or spells. Instead there’s a series of actions and reactions, of bluffs and responses. It’s fairly clever, and I found the demo game I played to be engrossing.
Button Shy Booth
I like Button Shy. They publish a bunch of wallet games, pretty much all consisting of 18 cards, a wallet, and rulebook. I’ve written about Skulls of Seldec from their catalogue before, and this year, I spent some time playing Phantasmic and Revolver Noir over at their booth.
First, Phantasmic. It’s a magical buffing/dueling game. It’s simple, quick, and fun despite the fact that I didn’t quite get how the up/down bid worked while I was playing it. Still, I’d like to play more.
Revolver Noir is a much slower thing. It’s a two player duel set in a mansion. It’s fun, but can feel like it drags a little bit, especially if neither you or your opponent are landing any shots, or connecting any traps. While I was at the booth, I heard from one of the folks running the booth that they’d met a group of folks who would play the game without the cards, and just memorized the rules.
AllPlay Booth
Finally, the AllPlay booth. I’m gonna be honest, I don’t have strong thoughts about AllPlay in general, but I did win both of the games I played, so it gets recounted.
First, Twinkle Twinkle. It’s a straightforward drafting/set collection game with the twist that the value of sets is determined by how your stars, planets, and other cosmic debris are placed on your board. The art is cute, the drafting is straight forward, and I have no real strong feelings about it on the whole. But I won!
Then, we played Kabuto Sumo. Kabuto Sumo has been a bit of a running joke between me and a friend for the last few years, as he apparently played a game of Kabuto Sumo that went on for two full hours without a winner, and since then has been convinced it was bad game. As a joke, I bought him a copy of the game for christmas last year. We have never once played it.
It took me less than 15 minutes to defeat him in the sequel, suggesting at least somewhat it’s a skill issue on his part. Or perhaps luck. But I prefer to think of it as skill.
Wrap-Up
This was a bit of a weird PAX for me. I spent a lot less time in the expo hall exploring, and lot less money, both in Reading Terminal and the show.
The whole thing was a little bit more of a blur than usual, and I couldn’t quite tell you why. Days went by quickly. I played a lot of Magic, chatted with folks, and generally tried to have a good time.
I think it was a good show. It’s possible my heart just wasn’t 100% in it.
PAX Unplugged has been great. I’ve been too busy doing a variety of things (Indie Game Night Market! Learning new CCGs! Losing all of my rare cards that I collected over the weekend, and just barely managing to get them back!) to really do too much writing.
For now, I’ll just say that it was a blast, and assuming I manage to get home, and not end up in a plane crash, I’ll try to talk about it a bit more tomorrow. But right now I need to pack for a way too early flight, and get some sleep.
Another year, another PAX! I say that like it’s a bad thing, but to be honest, this has been a pretty chill year so far. As always, I’ll be recounting my day, but first I want to draw attention to a few cool things I think folks should check out.
Brightcast
Brightcast is great. If you want to know why, you can read my writeup, but if you want to just try it out, the designers have a booth this year, and are selling copies. If you find yourself walking past, I highly suggest trying it out. They’re in the PAX Rising showcase, at Booth #3143.
Re;Match
I’ve been following Brother Ming’s Re;Match since… well, before it was named Re;Match! It’s a fantastic fighting puzzle game, and if you get a chance to swing by and try it you absolutely should. They’re down at Booth 4009, and there’s also a Pinny Arcade Pin you can get doing a demo.
Anyway, Re;Match is rad, and I can’t wait for it to release.
Anyway, let’s talk about my day.
This was a pretty slow start for me. Most of my morning, and a bit of the afternoon was spent playing Magic, mostly the new Avatar the Last Airbender set. I might have some more thoughts on it later, but for now I’ll just say that we played some two-headed giant games, and won all three of them by the skin of our teeth. Honorable mentions to incredibly good cards go to Standstill, and Secret Tunnel.
This is very good if you drop it turn 2, and you’re the only ones with creatures. 6 cards is nothing to sneeze at.
MVP creature of the decks, and it doesn’t even start as a creature. Won us at least 2 games.
After all that Magic, it was already about 3:00, so after a quick break for some chicken and waffles from Reading Terminal, I took a moment to quickly browse the expo hall, and play some Re:Match.
The non-MTG games
Having spent the day playing a collectible card game, I decided that what I needed was to spend some more time playing a collectible card game, and went over to try out the Cookie Run TCG. I have no idea why this exists, and I’ll probably do a more full review of it after PAX Unplugged, but for now I’ll summarize my opinion as “Doing some interesting things, but not necessarily inspiring”.
After that, I met up with a few friends, and we tried out the demo version of the LoTR trick taker. It’s a co-op trick taker, and generally a pretty good time. I bought the first version last year, and never played it. So I’m going to crack it open when I get home instead of just buying another game I haven’t played. If you want an complete opinion, just read Dan Thurot’s review instead.
I rounded out the day by playing Magical Athlete, and I’m just going to link to another Dan Thurot’s review instead of trying to summarize it. Despite winning, I never had any of the truly exciting moments he experience, and while I’d play Magical Athlete with a specific group of friends, it’s mostly to see them lose it.
We ended the day with Stem & Branch. I’m gonna be honest, I’ve been up for 12 hours, and I don’t quite know how to describe this one. Maybe as a light-medium weight sort of points collection game? Honestly most games you collect points, so that’s probably not the best way to describe it.
Dishonorable Mention: Jungo. A friend played it, thought it had an interesting design, but didn’t think it was very good. A bit of a bummer, given that Trio has been one of our favorites, and Combo is also pretty good, but not everything can be a winner. (No, that’s not a bad link, Combo really did used to be called Surfosaurus MAX.)
Oh, and I got like 3 boxes worth of One Piece chaff for free, so that was neat.
Tomorrow I’ll be trying out Riftbound, and maybe finally browsing the Expo hall? Who can say.
