Still a basic plan but I had an idea for a subnautica card game and I thought I'd write It down here.
There are 5 card zones at the beginning, one deeper ocean, three oceans and a shallows.
There are four card types:
- Creature
- Biome
- Item
- Spell
Creatures are the attackers and defenders of your health. There are two types, predators and prey. Predators have high stats and take life when sacrificed. Prey has low stats and restore life when sacrificed, however they can be buffed by certain items to balance their low attack. Most creatures are summoned in the basic ocean biome but the more powerful, like reapers and sea dragons, will need specific biomes explained later.
Well not that far later, Biomes are cards placed on top of the basic card zones. Things like safe shallows and lava zone are biomes placed on top of shallows and ocean depths respectively. At first they are merely for effect, later however creatures will get great boons or losses depending on where they fight (see below) so forethought is key. Certain items and spells can only be summoned when certain places are in play. e.g. The item "lifepod 5" can only be placed in the shallows with "safe shallows" placed on top of that and the spell "thermal power" lets you draw extra cards for each "thermal vent" or "lava zone" on the field. 5 biomes gets very cramped later in the game so there will be cards that let you summon extra ocean, shallows and deep ocean cards as well as ones that turn the deep ocean to the ocean depths and the shallows to land.
Items are everything mechanical and location-related. From the prawn to the degasi bases. Items are placed in a biome and stay, some effect the creatures within e.g. prawn, others only activate if you cast the right spell, or have the right creature. Items come in two kinds, mono and multi. You can have any number of multi equipment at one place, but only on mono. E.g. A prawn suit is a mono item. A grow bed is a multi item. Seabases are a special kind of mono. If you have a Seabase one, for example, the safe shallows you cannot place any items at the safe shallows, mono or multi.
A spell is an instant effect. This may be a day/night change, a certain spaceship exploding or just the bioreactor powering up. Spells immediately go to the discard pile after use and don't need a biome to be placed in. Some spells will need a certain biome to be on the field, however, or else they will have little or no effect. There is a special kind of spell called an event which, after use, is removed from the game and cannot be regained. This is so the aurora doesn't repeatedly explode and similar ridiculous events.
While giving an overview of the basic card types, I haven't yet dwelt into the actual game-play. Please wait I'm probably drawing more cards or doing some proper work. Here are the basics of victory and what you do your turn:
To win, this will likely change later, you must either take your opponent's health to 0 or get to 30 life. So you can attack your enemy with aggressive predators and damaging spells or ignore them and heal up with food and water. Each creature can attack once per turn. When it attacks it moves into it's target's biome.
e.g. Peepers gain attack in the safe shallows. Eye eyes and stalkers do not.
Player A has a peeper and an eye eye in empty ocean biomes, Player B has a peeper and a stalker, the stalker in a safe shallows biome.
Player A uses their peeper to attack the stalker. The peeper gains an attack due to being in the shallows so they are equal. However the stalker is a predator and so they both are destroyed Player A now attacks with the eye eye at the enemy peeper. Their attack is also equal, but they are both prey so they both survive.
Instead of attacking you can activate their sacrifice ability. You discard the creature and activate an ability depending on the card. A prey will usually have a health gain effect. A predator will have a damage dealing effect. You won't always have to sacrifice it to activate the ability but you still can't attack if you activate it and you will still only be able to use it once per turn.
Turn cycle.
Feel free to add more cards and abilities but be warned that I already thought out some cards and may have something different to what you had in mind.
P.S. People who may be interested in this @Baselerson @Thelastdeerfox @Xenodrone98 @Pokemon WAS better now it's very bad @Pokemon was better
