Punch Card
Role: Designer
Responsibilities: I designed the cards, enemies, and events.
Tools: Godot, G-suite, Figma, Paper prototyping
Project Length: 6 weeks
This game was originally designed for a Portland Independent Game designer Jam. We loved it so much that we took it further beyond.
The Game
Punch card is a deck building rogue-like which combines elements of play from games like Slay the Spire, Monster Train, and Inscryption. We designed a fairly innovative game system which utilizes “time” deducted from all enemies on the play-field as the primary resource. The objective is to get through an entire week of work before reaching 100 stress.
My Role
I co-designed all the game systems, mechanics, cards and enemies with my good friend and frequent design co-conspirator Nate. We identified the elements we most enjoyed from existing titles within the deck building genre and figured out a somewhat novel resource system that felt like a fun puzzle to solve from hand to hand, and game to game. We initially planned in google sheets and then built paper prototypes to test the system thoroughly.
Card Design
Each card has three elements: a time cost in the top left that is deducted from each on-screen enemy when played, an effect stated in the text box, and a type seen at the bottom of the card. We decided very early on that individual card effects were going to remain quite simple and that complexity should be vested in the interactions between different game elements. Various keywords like apathy, chill, or lies have specific effects that repeat throughout the game. Cards with specific keyword effects often synergize with similar effects, but we purposefully included cards that blend keywords to define different archetypes.
Each card also has one of three types: excuses have a single effect when played and directly attack enemies, distractions have a single effect and are not targeted at a specific enemy, and schemes provide an ongoing effect until end of day. These three types of cards appear frequently in almost all deck building games, and provide some interesting decision points when players are choosing how to construct their deck. Excuses are often the most powerful immediate adds, distractions provide fairly strong synergistic effects and schemes are the least helpful initially but drastically improve the power of the right deck build.
Thematically, all of the enemies in the game are exquisitely boring work tasks that you, the hero, must dodge using your excuses, distractions and schemes. Similar to our card design decision, we wanted to make the enemies as simple as possible. The number next to the sword tracks their remaining health as well as the stress damage that they will deal to you if the number next to the hourglass reaches 0. When you weaken an enemy, you not only bring them closer to being destroyed, but also lower the damage they will deal to you if you are unable to destroy them. When an enemy is destroyed or runs out of time, they will disappear and a new enemy will hop over the edge of the cubicle and join the fray.
Two elements increase the complexity of interaction between the player and the enemies. When a player plays a card with time value higher than 0, the time value is subtracted from all the enemies on screen. This leads to different combinations of enemies playing out very differently, as there is a great deal of variance in their base timer. A player could be slowly whittling down a high-strength, high-time enemy while a host of small, and short tasks buzz in annoyingly. That would feel very different than dealing with three high-strength, high-time enemies and making very careful decisions about card ordering. Some enemies also have abilities, which can be either static or triggered (seen above). These abilities can affect adjacent enemies and organically create more novelty and thus, replay-ability.
Enemy Design
Like in most games in the deck building genre, events allow you to modify your deck through card removal, addition, or transformation. We saw no reason to change this, but also felt that, unlike in games like Slay The Spire, events that cause permanent deck change should occur during the combat phase of the game loop. The idea is to ask the player to make long-term decisions in the moment, when the pressure is on. One of my favorite universal game elements to navigate is greed, and I think Punch Card definitely scratches that itch.
At the end of each day, the player is confronted with three events, which can either be dreams or nightmares. If you acquire stress during the previous work phase, you are more likely to have nightmares than dreams. Nightmares present effects that can more drastically change your deck but are also more unpredictable, they are dangerous comeback mechanisms for players if their run is not going well. Dreams provide less dramatic benefits and are very predictable, rewarding players for their good work and helping to prepare them for the next (harder) day phase.
Event Design
Final Thoughts
The most rewarding part of making this game was the self-imposed challenge to make all the individual parts of it as simple and multipurpose as possible. My co-designer Nate and I spent a truly epic amount of time trying to make each little piece fit as tightly as we could, and I am very happy with the result. The puzzle it presents is often very complex and I find myself constantly making mistakes and rethinking my choices. Sometimes the game feels very unfair, and I am a fan of that, but I always realize that I could have done something a little differently and barely squeaked a win for the day.
I hope to revisit this project in the future and prepare it for a real release.