The Gollop Chamber

Julian Gollop has been in the gaming industry for more than 30 years. You probably know him best as the designer of games like Chaos and X-COM: UFO Defense. His column, the Gollop Chamber, will cover gaming history, design, and probably a lot of XCOM.

I am often fascinated by the evolution of game design and how different genres and mechanics blend together in interesting ways. Most of the innovations here took place in board games, but there are also interesting evolutionary influences on video games where a video game takes up a board game idea and only makes it possible in that medium. So today I want to introduce you to a new video game subgenre – the Roguelike Deck Builder. There aren’t many entries in this genre right now, but I’m sure that will change.

First, to explain deck building games. When you hear “deck building” you might first think of Magic: The Gathering or Hearthstone, but these are games that you are building decks for, not “deck building games”. In deck building games, the game revolves around building the deck as part of the gameplay. The first deckbuilder I played was Dominion, a card / board game that was released in 2008. In Dominion, each player starts with a deck of 10 cards that contain money cards and victory point cards. In each round a player draws five cards from this pile and can buy a card with money cards from his hand and play one card. Then the hand is discarded so that a new hand of five cards can be drawn in the next round. When a player does not have enough cards to draw, he shuffles all of the discarded cards, including any cards bought in previous rounds, to create a new draw pile. The cards you buy include money cards and victory point cards of various values, as well as kingdom cards that can be played for various effects described on the card.

Popular table deck builder, Dominion.

All deck building games simply start with a few options for the player to chew on. Complexity increases as the game progresses and the player must develop strategies for adding cards to the deck and removing cards. Sometimes deck decisions that you make earlier in the game can come back to bite you. Sometimes bad cards are added to your deck and you generally have limited options for removing them.

There are relatively few video game deck builders out there, and most of them are iOS / Android adaptations of the original board games. One of the more successful is Ascension: Deckbuilding Game, which is available on Steam. It’s a fairly simple implementation of the original card game, but it didn’t set the video game world on fire.

The innovative and fascinating use of deck building mechanics for video games first appeared with Peter Whalen’s Dream Quest (originally an iOS app, but now available on Steam). You’ll have to ignore the very simple graphics, but otherwise it’s a compelling mix of rogue mechanics and deck building. The mischievous aspects are pretty simplified as the monsters don’t move, but the exploration and random generation are there. Deck building is vital as it becomes difficult to design your deck to deal with increasingly diverse enemies.

People aren’t kidding about Dream Quest’s graphics.

Dream Quest caught the attention of none other than Richard Garfield, designer of Magic: The Gathering. “It’s been ages since I couldn’t take a game,” he commented in a Facebook post. “I was absolutely thrilled when I realized that you really had to build a well-rounded deck. Most deck building games reward you for choosing a strategy and following it to the absolute exclusion of anything else. That’s one reason Why I’m a Tier Two Deck Builder – Usually I want to add a little more variance to my deck. In my search for Dream Quest I narrowed down my strategy as usual and found that at some point I always came across something that only destroyed me Didn’t actually win until I started adding back some of the cards that added dimension to my deck. ”

This is kudos from the trading card game grandfather indeed. Despite this confirmation, Dream Quest has remained in the dark. Now there is a new contender on the block.

Kill the tower in action.

Slay the Spire is in Steam Early Access and is fine. It streamlines the rogue aspects even further, with exploration limited to a ramified trail that includes monsters, special encounters, and roosting areas. You come steadily towards the boss of the last stage with an asymmetrical combat system. Typically, you can play multiple cards in one round of combat, including various attacks, blocks, and special effects. However, the monsters usually take one action each per turn. This action will be shown to you before the monster’s turn. This gives you the opportunity to plan and respond accordingly. It’s a smart mechanic because it enables you to make interesting decisions based on a known situation.

So far, I’ve enjoyed my time with Slay the Spire and I’m looking forward to early Access coming out. I’m sure there will be more video games that make interesting uses of deck building mechanics, but in the meantime, you’ll get your money’s worth with both Slay the Spire and Dream Quest.

The post The Gollop Chamber: Rise of the roguelike deck builder first appeared on DECKSAND FENCES DAILY.