A finished thing, for once

I have a hobby I almost never finish: designing games.

I went to school for it, too. Game technology, a whole degree. I didn't finish that either. (which, given the hobby, was almost too on the nose.) I went off to build web platforms for other people instead. (the career has been going great, thank you for asking.)

So game design stuck around as a hobby. Mostly the way hobbies do. A folder of half-ideas. A few prototypes nobody played. A lot of rules scribbled on the backs of things. Designing is the fun part to me. Finishing is slow and makes me lose interest.

So here's a small miracle. I finished one.

It's called Camp Clash. It's a card game for two players. You pick a class, you build a deck while you play, and you drag your opponent from 25 health down to 0. Eight adventurers, one campfire, a friendly game.

And here's a slightly out-of-order bit. I created this website to build things in public. Show the mess, share the thinking. Camp Clash (the game itself) is already done. Playtested, balanced, finished. So this one isn't building in public so much as explaining in public, after the fact.

Because there's still real work left. Just not the flashy design work. The manual needs editing and printing. The box needs designing and building. Those are the parts you'll actually get to watch. Consider this the introduction. The "here's what I made and why", before the "here's me losing a fight with some cardboard".

So. Why.

the game I wanted to hand a beginner#

I love card duelling games. Magic, Yu-Gi-Oh, Hearthstone. I've sunk an embarrassing number of hours into Magic in particular, so when I talk about the genre, that's the one I'm measuring against.

But the genre is mean to a first-timer.

So this was the goal I set myself. Make a card duelling game you could hand to someone who has never played one. Someone who plays board games, sure, but has never tapped a single land.

(everyone I've playtested with has had fun, by the way. they also already like me, so I'd take their reviews with a fistful of salt.)

I picked a few specific problems to design out. These games assume (or even count on that) you'll grind. Match after match, deck after deck, until the patterns sink in and you get good. A typical casual board gamer won't. They'll play two games, maybe three, then put the box back in the cabinet. So the usual way you build skill never gets a chance to kick in. I needed plans to land more often, rather than getting negated, even from someone who hasn't earned the skill yet. That problem shaped most of the game. So let's start with the mechanic built to solve it.

the queue#

In most card games you play cards straight from your hand. In Camp Clash, you don't.

Each turn you take a card and set it face-down into a queue of three. Then the oldest card in the queue is the one that actually plays. So everything you do happens a few turns after you decide it. You're effectively playing three turns ahead.

It sounds like a restriction. It's the opposite.

Because the delay means your opponent can't see what you just did and react to it. You both committed turns ago. Plans evolve a little longer because nobody can react in the moment.

And once the queue exists, fun things grow out of it. Some cards let you peek at what your opponent has lined up. There's a whole class, the Chronomancer, built entirely around bending the queue, stacking up time, and rearranging the order of things. The queue's constraint became the most interesting toy in the box for the more advanced classes.

That's the part that is unique to Camp Clash. A piece of structure that makes the game kinder without making it dumber.

everything you try gets countered#

Like I hinted at earlier, duelling games are games of interaction. You make a move, your opponent answers it, you answer the answer. That tension is genuinely great. It is also miserable when you're new.

You finally commit to a plan, and the more experienced player negates it the instant you try. Nothing you do lands. It feels less like a game and more like being told off.

The queue already takes most of the sting out of this. You committed turns ago, so there's nothing to interrupt in the moment. But Camp Clash goes one rule further: on your turn, your opponent makes no decisions. You play your turn. They play theirs. Nobody reaches across the table. Your turn is yours. (There is one exception in the rogue class, because that is what rogues do. They break the rules.)

It's also the principle the rest of the game hangs off. Including how combat works.

everyone wants to hit a creature#

Whenever I teach Magic to someone, they make the same assumption. They point at one of my creatures and go "okay, I attack that one".

Except you can't. In Magic you attack the player. Then I, defending, choose which of my creatures step in to block. And that last part is exactly the thing we just got rid of: blocking is a decision the defender makes on the attacker's turn.

So Camp Clash has no blocking step. When you attack, you choose where it lands. Straight at the player, or right at one of their characters. The defender doesn't answer back, because it isn't their turn. The move a beginner reaches for first turns out to be the way the game actually works.

a word about the art#

Let me get this out of the way, because someone will ask.

The art on the cards is AI-generated.

It started as an experiment. I wanted to see if I could direct the stuff into something with a consistent vibe. This was about a year ago, when that was meaningfully harder than it is now. It took ages. (I came away with real respect for people who are good at prompting, which is a sentence I did not expect to write.)

Is it obviously AI? Yes. Is it better than what I would have drawn? Also yes, and it isn't close. My illustration skill begins and ends at the stick figure.

I know people have feelings about this, and I think the feelings are fair. I'm not going to pretend I've tidily resolved all of mine. What I'll say for now is this: it let me put something other than stick figures on a hundred-odd cards, and the honest alternative was no game at all. I do want to get better at drawing by hand. I have a colleague whose diagrams come out beautiful seemingly without trying, which feels faintly illegal. If you draw, and you have tips for someone starting from absolute zero, I would genuinely love them.

(there's a longer, more honest piece in here about AI and art and where I've landed. this isn't it. that one might be coming at some point.)

what's next#

The design is finished. What's left is the unglamorous half of making a physical game.

• The manual needs editing, formatting, and printing.
• The box needs designing and building. An actual game box. Out of actual cardboard.
• Then repeat this process 9 more times to I can gift a copy of the game to the friends who helped me make it.

That's the part I'll be doing where you can see it. Expect wrong turns, dead ends, and at least one box that refuses to close.

Come watch.