Whether you’re designing a card game for fun or profit, running a Kickstarter campaign, or hoping to sell your ideas to publishers, these tips will help
Photo by Erik Mclean on Unsplash
Card games are a perennially popular type of game that involves players combining different cards and their strategic knowledge to win. There are different types of cards games, each with their own specific rules and gameplay mechanics. Designing your own card game can be an excellent way to challenge yourself creatively and test your abilities as an aspiring game designer.
You may have heard about the abundance of card games on the market today, which means there’s a lot of competition for a player’s attention. If you want to design your own card game, you first need to understand what makes other cards games successful — and not so successful — amongst players. Here are 6 keys that will help you design a card game people want to play.
Know your audience
Before you even begin designing a card game, you need to know who you’re designing it for. It may seem obvious, but you won’t be able to create a card game that will appeal to everyone — nor should you want to! Instead, you want to create a card game that caters to a specific audience.
For example, if you’re designing a card game with a fantasy theme, create a game that appeals mostly to RPG fans. Or, if you’re designing a card game with a sci-fi theme, create a game that appeals mostly to fans of the Star Wars franchise.
The audience you’re designing for is the one that will play your game, and it’s up to you to make sure that the game appeals strongly to their interests and aesthetic preferences. If you want your game to appeal to a niche audience, you need to find out what they like. There are several ways that you can do this:
- Get onto the relevant forums and social media groups where they hang out — such as Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit — and ask them what they’d like to play and why?
- Go to your local gaming nights and clubs and ask people what type of card games they like
- Go to game conventions and run questionnaires or interview players of popular and less popular games
- If you have the budget, engage the services of a market research company to handle at least some aspects of this for you
Game research is key
Researching your audience is only one side of the coin. You should also do a lot of research into the psychology of playing games and the technical sides of designing a card game. Card games have been around for centuries, so there’s a lot of information out there for aspiring designers like yourself.
Start out by looking at the top 10 most popular card games, as well as the top card games from specific eras and decades. You can also do research on specific card games you think are especially interesting and creative. By studying other card game designs, you can get a better understanding of what makes them work and what doesn’t. You can also learn a lot by reading and studying how different games were designed. After all, every card game starts out as an idea in a designer’s head, right?
There are many types of card games out there, from classic games like poker to newer games like Exploding Kittens, but there are still tons of ways to make your card game stand out from the crowd.
One of the best ways to do this is to give your card game a unique theme. There are so many options, from classic formats to fantasy, sci-fi, general knowledge, sport themed, and more. Another great way to give your card game a unique twist is to make it a social game. There are several ways to do this, from adding in rules that encourage players to talk to each other to making the game a team effort. Experiment and test all the possibilities of which you can think and you’ll soon have a long list of ways to make the game experience more interactive.
Be authentic
Once you’ve done your research and have a good idea of what you want your card game to be, you need to make sure that you’re being authentic to the vision. Don’t let yourself get caught up in creating something so completely new that no-one understands it, though; instead, create something that is authentic to you while also recognizable and belonging to an established niche. It’s a balancing act between originality and recognition.
This is especially important if you’re designing a card game with a specific theme that has been done before. For example, you may have an idea for a card game with a fantasy theme, as mentioned above. There are plenty of fantasy card games out there already, but you can turn this into a strength. After all, you’re not just designing a fantasy card game; you’re designing your fantasy card game. Give it a special twist and turn it into something only you could have done.
Establish a hook
Once you’ve come up with a theme and a general idea for your card game, you need to establish a hook — a unique aspect or feature that sets your game apart from the others. For example, if you’re designing a card game with a sci-fi theme, take a page from Star Wars and create a design that has two different card types (e.g. characters and events). If you’re designing a card game with a fantasy theme, you may want a design that uses dice to add more strategic depth and wider interactions. If you’re designing with a modern theme, you may want to make a card game that’s played with a smartphone app.
Provide meaningful choices for players
A key part of designing any game is to make sure that it provides players with meaningful choices. That means each player should be able to make different choices that affect how they play each round. This is especially important for card games, since they rely so heavily on the often quite random combination of different cards. For example, you could create a game where players must choose and combine different characters (eg. warrior, healer, rogue) to form a quest party. Each party member could have a specific role, traits, and skills or powers.
Don’t forget the fun!
Finally, you need to make sure that you’re not forgetting the fun of the game. This is the most important aspect of designing a card game, after all! If there’s no fun in the design, then why even make it?
Luckily, there are plenty of ways you can make sure your card game is fun to play. For example, as we’ve said, you can create a card game that has an interesting or unique theme. This could be anything from a futuristic sci-fi setting to a murder mystery scenario, a Wild West adventure, or an ancient fantasy kingdom. You can also create a card game that has a unique or quirky rule set, such as one that you play with dice, figures, or other components more commonly associated with board games. Every card game can be enjoyable, as long as you design it with the player’s experience in mind.
Creating your own card game can be a challenging but rewarding creative project. And self-publishing your cards to sell either through direct distribution channels or a crowdfunding campaign like Kickstarter can be a profitable side hustle or even develop into a full-time business opportunity. Remember that the best card games are the ones that fulfil the following criteria:
- Authentic to the designer
- Tailored to a specific audience
- Based on research and experience
- Provide players with meaningful choices
- Combine originality with tried-and-tested elements
- Are fun!
By following these six keys, you can design a card game people will want to play — and so, be more likely to buy!
How to print your card game
If you need only a handful of copies of your card game for fun alone or to share with a small group of friends, digital printing may be your best option. But if you have a commercial reason to print your game — namely, you mean to sell it! — and you need 100+ decks, a smart rulebook, and a custom printed box to package it all in, then offset printing is the cheaper option and offers far-and-away the best quality.
At QinPrinting we’ve been making custom card decks, rulebooks, and stunning printed boxes for decades. We work with businesses and independent creatives alike. Chat to us today to discuss your ideas. One of our expert printers with experience in card design and manufacture will be happy to help and advise you. Or if you’re further along in the process and you have files ready to go to press, we’ll be delighted to give you an unbeatable, no-obligation quote. Let’s talk!
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