Have you ever wanted to make a digital card game? If so, what would you do to play to the strengths of the medium?
I've never had the luxury! It's a thing that does interest me because there's a lot of stuff computers can do that physical play has to give up on, but also, stuff it loses.
One thing that digital card games lose is proximity and theatre; you can't, unless the interface gives you something very special, hold a card centimeters from your face and inspect the tiny details; you may be able to zoo but it'll be a thing on a screen blown up, different experience. You also can't do revelations or reveals of cards to all the players in the same way.
But anyway, stuff digital card games can do that physical ones can't:
- Fast searching and shuffling, searching subsections
- Game rules that can be secretly maintained. In a physical card game, let's say something gains you points equal to the number of turns it waited in your hand for you to play it - well, a human can't track that fairly in a physical card game.
- Extremely large decks. Extremely small decks. Marvel snap is a deck of what, twelve cards? That's physically very difficult to shuffle!
- Forced draws. You can do slugs and loads but you can't make a card that says, for example, 'you can only draw this on your third turn' and therefore if you don't draw it then the game knows you can't ever draw it again.
- Speed. Digital card games can iterate very, very quickly - I've played a lot more Star Realms as an app than I ever played heads up
- A virtual opponent. Card games that require human players to process and reconcile the actual play state can make things like twists or surprises in a narratively structure play experience impossible to sustain, but a computer can do that.
Interesting question!
