Decided to try making a card game

So, I’ve started a completely different game than what I’ve been thinking about (although I will come back to it once I have dipped my toes in some). It is based upon a game that my wife and I play when we have downtime, like in airports or waiting for trains, or just have had enough of screens for the day and it’s raining outside or something.

The game goes by a number of names, but I have heard two: Cambio and Cabo.

It’s a simple game to start, but can quickly devolve into a really strategic game of information management and trick plays against your opponent. I thought it’d be a great game to try to make and get familiar with the environment of Godot, making assets, etc.

The game goes like this:

• You and your opponent both get 4 cards, all face down
• You look at 2 to start then place them back face down
• The goal is to have the lowest hand possible

There is a draw pile and a discard pile. You can draw from the draw pile or swap a card from the discard pile.

So, if you draw a card and it is, say, 3 and you know you have a 7 in your hand, it’d be a good move to swap your 7 for a 3 and discard the 7.

Other cards have powers when you draw them:

• 7 & 8 is look at your own cards
• 9 & 10 is look at someone else’s
• J & Q is swapping cards without looking

Also, if you see a card get discarded you can discard a card of the same number. So this also helps reduce your hand’s value.

Those are most of the rules, but there are various different house rules out there.

Anyways, thought it’d be fun to try and make this and have spotted the game Balatro and would be interesting to incorporate the deckbuilding roguelike sort of experience to Cabo where you need to really dominate your opponent.

But for now, just getting the prototype working to see if it’ll be a fun game. I technically already know it is a fun card game, so I think adding this different level of abstraction on top that lets you break the game and get ridiculous hands and scores would be a fun experience.

Here’s a screen shot of the incredibly rough first prototype:

Early screenshot of it (called Nil, but name might not be final)