Idea for a Card Game

[SteveSmith]

I recently had an idea for "Spectrum text adventure-themed card games", so I thought I'd mention it here. In the past I've used various printing services to create small card games, and (copywrite issues notwidthstanding) this might make something interesting.

Has anyone else played any of the "Unlock!" escape room-type card games? If not, basically you have a deck of face-down cards, each with a unique number or letter on the back to identify them. You start by revealing the first card, which describes your situation and may allow you to turn over other cards if there are numbers (often hard to find and take some looking) on this card.

One interesting mechanic is that some cards can be combined with others (similar to the classic text adventure trope of using one object with another). Since these cards all have numbers, you add the numbers of the two cards and reveal the card with that total number on it (if you have one - if not, it effectively means that nothing happened). There are other types of puzzles and mechanics, but this give you the gist.

So, to take Planet of Death as a simple example, it would have the following cards, each with a nice picture on it:-

1 - The starting card that describes the situation (on a mountain plateau). There is a flint here (card 5) . It says you can go South to the dense forest (card 2) or East to a cave (card 3).
2 - The dense forest. There is some rope tied to a tree (card 9)
3 - A damp cave. West will take you back to card 1.
5 - Some flint
9 - Rope tied to a tree

The solution to this bit is to use the flint to cut the rope (5 + 9 = 14), so the player can take card 14.

14 - Loose rope.

..and so on. There will obviously be a lot more cards in the finished game. Apologies that this is all very abstract; when I've got some more time I might create some mockups to give a better idea, or at least finish the above list of cards.

[stupidget]

Would this be a bit like the rather creepy Inscryption card game on the ps5?

[SteveSmith]

Would this be a bit like the rather creepy Inscryption card game on the ps5?

I'd not heard of that so just Googled it. It seems a fair bit more complex than what I was suggesting. My idea (based on the Unlock games so I can't take full credit) is to take cards and solve puzzles.

To give a better idea, here (spoiler!) is the solution to one of the Unlock games:

This particular one could be a bit like a Behind Closed Doors adventure.