I have a lot of things I want to say, but I think I want to start with the most important one, and that’s an absolutely massive thank you.
Thank you to Boston FIG for putting us in the showcase, and an extra special thank you to Joshua Chin, who graciously accommodated our requests for extra tables to station NPC’s at, and letting us hide cards around the venue.
Thank you to our friends Lucas, Sukie, and Tyler who helped us run Card City Critters. Without your help as NPCs, hiding cards, repacking decks, and doing booth setup and breakdown, none of this would have been remotely possible.
Thank you to my co-designer Max Seidman, who has taken a two sentence idea that I had 3 years ago, and worked to turn it into an actual game that can be played, while I’ve puttered about drawing goofy monsters, and designing a few cards.
And most of all, thank you to everyone who stopped by the booth try out the game! Whether you just tried a demo, took a starter and went off the challenge the gardener and drake master, or were one of the six players to make it all the way through to challenge and take down the magnate, thank you so much for playing.
I’ll have more to say over the next week, and some thoughts about what worked well, and what didn’t, and a million other changes, some big and some very small as a result for the feedback we got, but right now, just thank you!
We’ve got just two days left until Boston FIG, and the first chance to try out Card City Critters! And with that time, I’d like to introduce the second of our starter decks, the Dragon Hatcher.
Dragon Hatcher is based around hatching and raising mighty dragons. Dragons are all about growing stronger, and this is represented by their key mechanic: Evolve!
Cards with Evolve like Mighty Dragon can’t be put directly into play. Instead, they need to be placed onto a card of the evolve type. While this means they take a bit longer to get into play, they can often attack the turn they come if they’re evolved from a card played on an earlier turn.
Of course, you can’t hatch anything without an egg! Dragon Hatcher has a wide variety of eggs to use. Some, like Big Egg, are pretty simple. Others however, can be quite unusual…
Eggs tend to have low power. They haven’t even hatched yet, after all! Instead, their purpose is to hatch into something incredible.
Of course, just because you’ve hatched a dragon doesn’t mean it can’t get even stronger! Given enough time, they might grow much more powerful and wise.
And of course, dragons, like all other cards, can be played from the Trap Zone! Pitfall Dragon in particular rewards this sort of play, providing one of the most powerful stun effects in the game, while bringing out one huge threat to turn a losing game around.
Of course, some speak of an even more powerful dragon… perhaps the strongest critter in the game… a critter that can’t even be stunned…
But these are just rumors. Right?
Here There Be Dragons
Of course, this is just a small sampling of what Dragon Hatcher has available. There are also a fair number of non-dragon support cards, and other useful tools to fetch what you need. I’ll have one more day of quick self promo, but then it’ll just be time to play!
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?
