Deck-building Designer Guide #1 – A Niche of Video Gaming

The genre of deck-building games is as the name says, a game where the player makes his desk by choosing cards. The cards may be associated with a cost or a value, but the player has the choice to take any card he wants as long as he has the needed resources.

The genre was strictly bound to the tables as card games weren’t as popular as the action games that came with the time. But as the years pass by, the genre is gaining popularity and momentum thanks to games like Slay the Spire and newly released Monster Train.

One of my professors was a big fan of the genre and encouraged us to play deck-building games while Slay the Spire was becoming more known.

(If you’re reading this Arvind Sir, thank you!)

Subsequently, I thought it’d be a great idea to make a small guide on the basics of the genre for new designers to learn and more senior designers to voice their opinions. So here we go!

What is Deck-building?

Deck-building is not the same as a collectible card game. The difference comes in how the player accesses the cards in a specific deck.

Deck-building lets the player make their decks during the session of the game.

Collectible card game allows players to purchase card packs to make their decks before the game session.

How do you make your own deck?

By using the specific currency given to you every round from the start of the game. It's one way of doing it just like Star Realms does.

Star Realms lets you buy any card provided you have the required amount of coins. The cards themselves act as the currency so you can buy any card you want, as long as the total pool of coins suffices the cost. Simple.

On the other hand, games like Slay the Spire will reward the player with cards when a room is cleared because of its rogue-like nature. It’s similar to a reward screen where the player can choose a card as a reward with other surprises mixed in.

In both cases, the player starts with very basic cards which allow them to progress further and acquire more cards while playing.

So, how does the game work?

Be it a PvP or a PvE experience, the deck building games’ economy works in the following way –

The player has a set health pool, so does his opponent.

The win condition is to make the opponent’s health pool reach zero.

To play the cards, the player has to draw a few cards from a pile of the shuffled cards. This is her Draw Pile. The draw pile contains the card that the player will draw from the next turn or if he plays a card that allows him to do so.

Once a card has been played, the player discards her card into another pile face down. This is her Discard Pile.

When the player runs out of cards to draw, the discard pile is shuffled and the player draws from it again.

Let’s look at an example to understand this.

Here, the opponent has 16 health left and the player has 3 cards she can play. She can play whichever card she wants, as she has gained these cards during the game.

Now the Scratch Card does low damage initially, but the card’s effect makes the effect stack. Uppercut does no damage but knocks down the enemy denying them their turn.

Whenever the player uses a card, the card goes in the discard pile.

The economy of the game is entirely dependent on the design. It’s up-to the designer if you want to design the economy of the cards and have a cost to play the cards.

The cards in Slay the Spire have an associated cost, while Star Realms does not.

In the next blog post, we’ll take a look at how the cards should be designed and learn more about card synergy.

Stay tuned. 😊