So I got the response to my Vacuum Launcher patent filing for my #VacuumTCG (nearly a full year late), and long story short there are a bunch of issues not worth trying to fix. With how the toy and TCG markets are now, a licensing deal likely still isn't happening, regrettably. #gamedev
I haven't fully designed any sets beyond the first for #VacuumTCG because the rules aren't finalized, but theoretically nothing is stopping me from #writing the tie-in novellas. However, without the game in a playable state to go with them, they'd lose out on impact. #gamedev
Card image of Adaptabolter, a common device
I keep debating porting my #VacuumTCG to Screentop or Tabletop Simulator so people can playtest it. Between nothing having art & the core mechanics of spinning cards with a launcher & looking through polarized filters only working in paper it's not ideal. But at the same time I want people to play!
It's a little crunchy, but check out my second Vacuum Launcher prototype in action! This suction-operated toy is the sweet hook for my #VacuumTCG, where the corner pointing to the target sets where your cards enter! #gamedev #3dprinting
Theoretically I could port #VacuumTCG to a simulator, replacing the card spinner with a d4, but that takes half the fun out of the game, so I haven't. And getting an actual toy mass manufactured in this economy without investment is basically impossible. #gamedev
When designing #VacuumTCG, one of my goals was to ensure it had a draft format, because most TCGs these days don't, and I personally find limited to be super fun. That's why there are only 2 card rarities, and part of why there are only 4 colors, so it's easy to draft a colorpair. #gamedev
In terms of the actual narrative for #VacuumTCG, I only have the beginnings of an outline and cards for some of the characters like Gail here. The plan was for the first 5 sets to focus on establishing the present state of the galaxy and slowly add mechanical complexity. #gamedev 1/2
I kept meaning to show off how the Tide cards in #VacuumTCG actually look in action, so here's a clip! As they spin, they flash in and out of visibility! #gamedev
Finally, we have the far-future humans of #VacuumTCG. The people in the universe of Vacuum live in a highly socialist society! This makes them as radical and worth exploring as the other alien factions, and was not at all a political statement on my part. Wink. #gamedev
Hi, #gamedev people! Do you like deep lore? In this third installment of my blog series on my #VacuumTCG project, I cover the Vokar, a race of color-changing space frogs consumed in their pursuit of universal knowledge.
Here's part 2 of my #VacuumTCG lore series! The Tves are your classic 'monstrous' aliens in that they're as deadly as they look, and they look like four-winged dragon-wasps. Also their fascist society is even worse, and they modified themselves to have a gravity sense. #gamedev
Happy #pride 🏳️🌈! In honor of the occasion, I'm kicking off my new #VacuumTCG lore blog series with the Olog, a species of cyborgs who regularly hotswap out their gender because they can. #gamedev
Unlike in MTG, where Instants can be played at any time, in #VacuumTCG Reactions are only playable before attacks like in Wixoss. This streamlines gameplay! As such, I had to get more creative when designing some control cards, while others are modal to fit better into the Quadrant system! #gamedev
In addition to the 1st set, I have a whole #gamedev roadmap for 7 more #VacuumTCG card sets with new mechanics and card types. The most unique are System cards, which Hypercube here would have worked well with. Systems essentially give the player a fifth zone to move their other cards into! (1/3)
For #VacuumTCG, I added Tide cards and a cycle to interact with them when I had the polarized filter idea after everything else was already done. Meanwhile the big funny vanilla was in the initial playtest and stayed basically unchanged. XD #gamedev
Had #VacuumTCG actually gotten licensed by Mattel or something, I had product architecture already lined up. Booster packs would have had:
10 Commons
2 Rares
Either 1 Tide Card or 1 Foil
1 token/ad
That's it. No chase alternate frames, no secret rarites, just clean, draftable fun.
If you're wondering why I've mainly been showing off cards from #VacuumTCG, it's because most of my other games are awkward to share digitally. Cards in ParaLens aren't fully readable without the decoder film Lenses to overlay atop them. Such are the perils of striving for uniqueness as a #gamedev
As a #gamedev, my favorite card designs are the ones that would not work at all in other, similar games. Take Chaos Engine, here. When you play it, everbody rotates their cards between quadrants in a random direction, completely scrambling which card effects are active that turn cycle! #VacuumTCG
Something I dislike about Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh is that there are so many subtypes/archetypes with cards that aren't really compatible with eachother. I made sure #VacuumTCG didn't have this problem since there are only 20 subtypes. Generous Quartermaster here will work with 5% of cards! #gamedev
Compared to MTG, One of the biggest differences #VacuumTCG has is that since there's no 'land', there's no 1/turn limit on resource cards either! This means draw becomes stronger than ramp, and that rather than cantrips, cards which double as resource production are common instead. #gamedev
So unfortunately I noticed that the icon I made for the blue resource in #VacuumTCG, Hydrocarbon, really isn't visible at card scale. It's supposed to be a methane atom but the hydrogens aren't really visible against the black cause they're hollow. I'll redesign it if the game takes off.
The 'dual land' cycle I designed for Set 0 work in how I feel is an interesting manner with #VacuumTCG 's systems. They have a 50% making each of their two resources on the turn they enter, but you can move them between Quadrants EOT like any other card to change which they produce for you!
Another cool aspect of #VacuumTCG I put into the design is that the basic resource cards for each of the four colors have differences beyond just the resource they generate, making the gameplay of each even more distinct! Each evokes the general deck archetype the color gravitates towards.
As for keywords, I tried to make the evergreen ones for #VacuumTCG multifunctional if possible. For example, take Piercing. It works like Afflict in MTG, being easier to math out than Trample is, but cards with piercing also bypass Shielded, which is Vacuum's Hexproof! (I dislike Ward mechanically.)
As a #gamedev I wanted to make sure the first set of #VacuumTCG, the only one I fully designed the 250+ cards for, wasn't too complex. That's why there's only 1 card type in Set 0! The plan was for Enhancements, Systems, and Stratagems to be introduced 1 set at a time over the first year of the game
Overall, #VacuumTCG has rules similar to Magic's, but simplified enough for ease of learning without sacrificing depth. The biggest change is the addition of the Reposition Step at the end of your turn, where you can move your cards to new quadrants, potentially triggering Assignment effects.
The other unique component I put into the #VacuumTCG, later in the #gamedev process, were Tide cards. These have a polarizing filter, so if you spin them with the Launcher, and you're wearing the cardboard polarizing glasses, it looks like the card is flashing in and out of visibility!
Who likes cool #lore? Everybody, so I'm gonna start sharing the bits I have for my #VacuumTCG. Each color of card and its attached faction in the game's universe has a different answer to the fundamental question many works of science fiction ask: What does it mean to be a person? #gamedev
It's about time I shared more on one of my best projects, the #VacuumTCG. Sheer spite at how badly Hasbro was treating #magicthegathering inspired me to make a better game, and this is the patent-pending toy for it that's supposed to hook players. It spins cards with a suction cup!
