Overview
I’ve always loved cards. This has persisted to my love for both tabletop and digital games today, but I think a lot of the joy stems from simpler times. I carried a standard deck on my person as a child, ready for spontaneous play during parties, breaks, even random little pockets of time in between class activities. They were easy, accessible, and varied; everyone knew or could pick up a card-based game in minutes. A common engagement level could be found for close friends, classmates, summer campers and strangers alike. Games could be found or made on the spot, whether you were new and just looking to join the socialization, or a seasoned ERS veteran.
Actual image of the hole my friend kicked into a wall upon being bested at Egyptian Ratscrew.
Beyond classic card games, cards are fundamental to a wide variety of games now, including tabletop and party games, deckbuilder roguelikes, TCG/CCGs, and as additional mechanics to many more. It had me wondering, beyond any one of these specific categories, what is it about cards that creates captivating gaming experiences? Just as a book can’t be reduced to merely a vessel for text, but is a meaningful vessel in itself, cards bring a valuable dimension.
As a disclaimer, this is meant a preliminary, broad exploration of what cards bring to play. I’d love to do a deeper dive or think tank on the topic (or related topics) in the future. I’ll be relying on some significant examples in recent memory as I think I’ll be able to speak on those specific references most accurately (sorry Slay the Spire! I haven’t played you in quite a while!); I also want to focus on the simple aspect of cards themselves and how they’ve contributed to gaming experiences, not covering the vast and complex category of TCG/CCGs in detail. (This paper, among others, touches more on the CCG area!)
Aspects to explore
As “cards” aren’t exactly a genre or style of game in themselves, I’d thought about what aspects might bring unique meaning when broadly applied to games. Tentatively:
- Physicality – physical or simulation of physical interaction that pleases and/or immerses the senses.
- “Pieces” – a particular innate structural breakdown into consistent pieces that can be built upon.
- Narrative engagement/”flavor” – the way cards deliver built-in narrative or meaning
- Abstraction – the representation of larger concepts in the structure of cards
- Sociality – the way cards encode a sense of socialness or assembly
Physicality
Cards involve a sense of physicality, of something you can hold and grasp and own. Like books, it’s not about just vaguely looking like the real thing or slapping on textures to meet an aesthetic (though attention to detail and coherence through things like sound design can certainly help). I have gripes with how this is often done in cooking mechanics as well; there’s not much satisfaction in just clicking a button to combine ingredient images into a meal image. Nor is clicking and auto-deploying an ability going to land the same way placing a card down does, even if the end result is identical. Cards enforce an object middleman that contributes to the feeling of physical space.
There are important actions and movements to the interactivity like looking at a “board”, considering one’s “hand”, moving and arranging and being able to flip, inspect, hide, and generally mess with physical artifacts. It’s part of what made Inscryption feel somewhat cozy, as Leshy not only employs scrappy little cards in his storytelling, but also uses various other “physical” objects, masks, and tokens. Tabletop Simulator feels like a smooth online representation of tabletop gaming with attention to the interactivity of cards themselves and space. Notably, some aspects of the physical aren’t replicable in the virtual, and vice versa. For instance, complete freedom of movement versus fancy card animations, respectively. But this isn’t the point–cards bring a layer of physicality that can be leaned into depending on the goals of the game, whether that’s to introduce coziness, increase player interactivity, “wow” players by going beyond the norm, or replicate a particular sensation/association.
Speaking of association, it’s common for people to have experiences like my own. Playing card games in-person at leisure, enjoying poker nights/the thrill of a casino, even laying out a tarot spread–these are all emotions and associations that games can draw on purely through the use of similarly themed/structured cards. Cards being associated with physical items also boosts the sense of collection.
Wildfrost cards deck display, some of which have cute charms attached to them + a display of total charms collected.
I love the implementation of Charms in Wildfrost–as a type of boon, the mechanics that Charms provide could be indicated in many other ways, like having a small icon and extra text laid out on the side, as many roguelikes do. But the idea of tying a little charm to a wood-border card (despite the impracticality of doing so in real life) is incredibly, well, charming. It’s an example of somehow increasing the sense-pleasure of physicality in a digital medium that goes beyond actual, traditional physical possibilities. Balatro also does this, producing satisfying transformation of artifacts via stamping, painting, modifying the paper quality itself.
Pieces
It’s fun and useful to break things down into pieces, assemble them, and make something new. Using cards is almost like puzzling in that way, where one tries to think critically in order to make your pieces work and “fit” them into what you have. There is also a level of organization and, again, collection involved with pieces. Of course, games don’t require cards to be composable and decomposable at their core, but cards bring this to the forefront of the player-facing experience. All the mechanics, abilities, and “pieces” are laid before the player, and it’s up to them how they’ll put things together. Abilities being “tokenized” isn’t necessarily unique to cards either, but cards offer a great template for doing so.
What it feels like you’re “doing” shifts when it’s simply framed differently: abilities/effects being pieces to play rather than spells to cast or actions to undertake. There’s also a specific enjoyment in being able to visualize and technically have access to all the pieces that make up a game or, at least, “your” game (the cards involved in a run/match/current strategy). It removes a level of uncertainty while still allowing for the newness of discovery, as you may surprise yourself by seeing new strategies surfacing and pieces combining. Because of this, it’s also very important that “pieces” are consistent–spades look like spades, keywords are precise, text is structured and used identically. Without consistency, pieces lose cohesion relative to one another and the game falls back into a state of chaos/randomness/unstructured mayhem. That sort of game can be fun, but importantly loses the kind of fun that comes with organization, assembly, and internal deduction.
Another great aspect of consistent piece-making is how accessible it is to modding. From classic card game house rules to easy videogame content addition, having a precise precedent (what’s more, tons of examples given each piece is an example in itself) makes adding new mechanics and cards extremely streamlined and clear. Being so prevalent and natural to card-playing experiences, such mods don’t feel like they infringe on the integrity of the game, given they are done in good faith and not in a competitive setting where system rules are necessary.
Narrative
“Have you said your goodbyes, young Tidecaller?” “Yes, greatmother.” “Are you afraid?”
“…Yes, greatmother.” “Good. To be afraid is to be cautious. But trust yourself, as we trust you. Now, go. And may the currents keep you.”
Flavor text + splash art of a single card in Legends of Runeterra
Cards being artifacts reminds me of how narrative is often learned in walking simulators, or how lore is discovered in games where histories and backgrounds are tucked away in optional descriptions and Easter eggs. Cards involving a major visual design element lends itself wonderfully to building a narrative or in-building symbolic meanings. Inscryption’s eerie horror-woodland vibes, Wildfrost’s cute and simple adventure story, Legends of Runeterra’s expansion of a rich fantasy world. In Teenage Exocolonist, the deckbuilding element represents the gathering of experiences over time. Despite its gameplay flaws, I really liked the concept of cards as memories in that game. As for Runeterra, the beautiful art, flavor quotes, and voice acting really enriches the game’s experience without distracting from the gameplay. As I said, cards are artifacts–and as such, they naturally are well-suited to delivering narrative in an easy but unintrusive way.
It’s likely part of why card games often accompany popular franchises successfully. Collectibles depict glimpses of the world in Magic and Pokemon illustrations. But they don’t always have to be made after-the-fact; games can and do use card-based mechanics to deliver tidbits of flavor that round out the world they take place in, to establish a magic circle, and to deliver primary stories. Sometimes, emergent narratives of the player’s own design can even manifest based on the cards they choose to play. Even the standard deck encodes a kind of personable symbolism (royal cards, suits, the Joker) and further player-driven narrative can be built in depending on the game being played (i.e. playing “Presidents”).
Abstraction
Cards also become great slates on which to abstract bigger concepts, whether that’s a certain power fantasy, system, or strategy. It’s really fun on a design level, both as a player and designer, to try and distill larger notions into card-form representations. Inscryption utilizes mechanics that abstract ritual sacrifice and overall has a simple, fast card cycling process that is consistent with its themes of life and death. What might be even more interesting is how, once a concept is abstracted into a solid analogous representation, how messing with its card form can simultaneously push forward the larger, original idea. How does one project a deck-milling strategy (a rather meta card strategy) into a meaning beyond the card game? Perhaps, one hones in on the feeling of losing resources and running out of time. If certain cards mechanically interact in a powerful way, what could that combination mean for the concepts the cards represent? What is a “turn” in the context of one’s game: a hyper-interactive back and forth, auto-chess-like, heavily individual per turn, or an entire group playing rounds together at once?
Trading in a “pelt” in Inscryption, for cards with various archetypes delineated by tribe symbols.
There are lots of interesting questions that crop up in the process of this abstraction. They can be applied beyond the context of cards for sure, but there is a unique design challenge in abstracting towards a card system. Not every game or vision needs to be “card-ified” and cards being shoehorned in everything isn’t the end-all solution. But I’d argue that the experiment may almost always yield an interesting alternative direction or framing. It’s a great prompt that can push existing ideas.
Sociality
Finally, while not so anchored to the medium, I think it’s worth noting an aspect of sociality in card games. There is a general sense of assembly–whether that is an assembly of community to play the game or an assembly of “people” (or creatures, champions, companions, what have you) as key cards. Lacking these, card games might instead be strongly focused on interaction with people (using a “Compromise” spell). Stripped of any of these angles, a card game may still prosper, but I can’t help but feel like it’s missing the point of using cards specifically. Your cards are your friends/opponents, or your means to interact with your friends/opponents in a way that enhances that interaction. Without this, one is left mostly with just the literal mechanism of playing cards (read: drag and drop/deploy)–a mechanism, lacking other components, that I would say is lacking in engagement when you could have animated fight moves, twitch-based action, or cozy decoration.
Extra notes and other frameworks
I imagine card games will continue to experiment and flourish, and I look forward to engaging with them with a keen eye. Below are a few extra notes and thoughts:
In the linked CCG paper, I found it interesting to consider the delineation of enjoyment on a collection, deckbuilding, and match level. On a collection level, there’s an intuitive satisfaction in gaming for collecting things–whether that’s simply obtaining an array of items, personalizing them, hunting achievements, or ultimate completion. This applies to card collecting on a base level, with often layers of specialness added when you introduce “rarer” cards, different types of cards for different mechanics, shiny foils and gold borders indicative of your favorites and/or mastery.
Chiseled + Gold chiseled card in Wildfrost, Prismatic card in LoR
On a deckbuilding level, there’s another sense of satisfaction when a player accounts for strategy. Things feel good when they click in place and in a way that combines one’s collection with one’s game plan. And on a match level, these strategies come into play with one’s “opponents”–in a sense that often in card games, it’s more about facing opposing strategies than it is achieving the specific, arbitrary goal. (“Flux” has ever-changing rules/goals, and “Mao” is built on the idea of shifting player-determined rules/goals, and they’re both so much fun!) This can manifest in PvP for competitive games, pseudo-PvP like Inscryption, PvE in Wildfrost/Slay the Spire, etc. The goal can even be to simply achieve a certain number of points from puzzling together combinations like in I Was A Teenage Exocolonist. Balatro similarly has a point goal, but personalizes the “Blinds” as your opponents with a major gimmick–testing your strategy against theirs.
What’s important is the payoff in using your pieces, not just to land a strategy, but the “feel” of using them. There’s satisfaction and personal choice in using particular pieces, pretty pieces, narrative cards, and your entire, curated collection.
Balatro!
And finally, Balatro blew up lots of interest this year as a well-developed “poker roguelike”. I love this moniker for it, not just because that’s exactly what it is, but because in the interest of this write-up, it is a card game abstracting a card game in itself. Certainly, its success can be attributed to many factors, including the appeal of roguelikes in general and it being a genuinely well-designed game. But it’s appeal to even non-gamers and widespread popularity feels in part tied to its twist on the well-known classic that is Poker. Its result is one that has married classic and modern card-game-type norms in a compelling iteration.
