HOCKEY CARD GAME MECHANICS IDEA FEEDBACK QUESTION THINGAMAJIG

Posts

Pages: 1
Alright so this is going to be a fairly specific text about some specific ideas that I essentially just got and haven't tried at all so... But I want to see if people think this might work mechanically or if it is dead in the water gameplay-wise.

So with the "revive the dead" I remembered an old hockey card game inspired by "Soccer Cards" that I tried to make. It came to a very early stage where I realized I didn't have any good ideas on how to implement something that seemed at least a little bit like hockey.

Well last night I went to bed and some ideas came to me. There's been lots of digital card games in recent times so now I guess the game is not really very inspired by Soccer Cards anymore but is a hockey card game inspired by... loads of other things.

Here starts actual description of gameplay mechanics
The idea is thus. You pick a team consisting of six players, three attackers, two defenders and one goalie. Each player has a stat and five cards attached to them.

Each card has a stat for an offensive play and a defensive play. Some cards might also have special actions or reactions (I'm thinking maybe tehre's "penalty" cards of "icing" cards or similar)

At the beginning of the game each player draws six cards, one card from each of their hockey players' stacks. A turn works so that you try to move the puck forward. The puck can be either in your defensive zone or in your offensive zone. If the puck is in the defensive zone you try get it to the offensive zone. And if it is in the offensive zone you try to score.

An offensive move works so that you take the value of each of your attacking players, compare them to the value of the opponent's defensive players and then add a card to this mix. The opponent then also adds a card to his mix and you compare numbers.

So for example each attacking player has a value of 50 and each defensive player has a value of 50. You compare these numbers (150, three attacking players vs 100, two defensive players) and add the values on the cards involved. The result is the percentage chance to succeed. (so if there were no cards involved, there would be a 50% chance of succeeding)

A scoring move on the other hand would work a little differently. You pick only one player and use the dranw card attached to said player. (you have one card for each playe rin play) This would then be compared to the goalkeeper's value and a card. So instead of a three vs two. It's a one vs one situation to make a scoring play.

A period would take ten turns (each turn is one offensive and one defensive, so it'd be 20 total turns, one minute per turn). So if each player has 5 cards attached to them you'd use 20 of a total of 30 cards per period. Every time you use a card, you draw a new one from the used player's card pile. This could also mean that if you use one player's five cards you'd be unable to draw another card and would have to make do with a smaller hand size.

Now these are the mechanics I had in mind. there can be all kinds of variants and the numbers obviously have to be tweaked so that the game is somewhat balanced. I'm thinking of this as a single player experience because I don't know how to do multiplayer so it doesn't have to be completely balanced.

So far it's also completely an exercise in math. I have no idea how this will actually play out (will scoring be too rare? too common?), but these are numbertweaks that'll show up in actual testing.

Some of the added things I've thought of so far is the ideas of action cards. "Icing" would be a defensive play that makes an offensive move automatically fail. "penalty" would take out an opposing player for two minutes, making it harder for them to do things (offensive moves would be two vs two or defensive moves could be three vs one). The idea with cards attached to players is also that a player might have low stats but good cards or good stats and bad cards or maybe one good card and many bad ones or other such things.

My question is essentially if this system seems sound on its surface or if there are some obvious breakable elements in the very basic version of it? And also does this at a glance seem interesting to play?

And obviously if you have ideas for special actions and player gimmicks that's fun too.
I'd play it. Also, can you work the neutral zone into it? that's a big part of hockey.

Maybe, if you find the whole thing too daunting, you could try making a hockey Shoot Out game and test out some of your ideas there.

Having some examples of the cards you hand it mind would help with the envisioning process for me and allow me to provide more feedback or suggest more ideas.
Pages: 1