Instinct Card Design

A Bug Battle

While thinking about Instinct I knew I wanted the deck of cards players were building to represent their hive of bugs “evolving” over the course of the game. The idea was that each queen would adapt to the other’s strategy by evolving the right new abilities, which fit naturally into deckbuilding games since they do a great job of representing growth over the course of a short game. From here I knew I needed to have the hallmarks of a deck builder, like draw cards, deck culling (removing weaker cards in the deck) and purchasing. Many deck building games also have a currency system to buy cards, and cards for purchase with victory points to decide the winner. I decided to replace currency cards with “food” locations on the map that bugs could harvest to, then carry back to the queen to buy cards. This made sure bugs had to keep moving around the map. I also got rid of victory points and replaced it with queen capture, so instead of base cards being “1 victory point” base cards were movement of bugs around the map. This led to much more thematically consistent gameplay and took advantage of the best of deck building games.

How to Categorize Cards?

I had a hell of a time trying to label the cards. Here’s the goal: I need a category of cards for movement that apply to workers, warriors, and the queen. These movement cards are unrestricted, so you can play as many as you’d like on any bug, or spread them out. Then there are queen cards. These spawn new bugs or have global effects. These are also unlimited so the queen can play any number of these. Then there are actions that the workers and warriors can take. These are limited to just one per bug.

I started with the images above. The card categories were Bug, Queen, Reactions, and Movement, but these felt off to many players. The information communicated was different for card types. Some types showed the type of unit that could use it, and others displayed the action type. The solution I came up with was to use Action, Reaction, and Movement cards, but include an icon to show which bug type (worker, warrior, or queen) can use the card. Other usability improvements include arrows indicating possible orientations and making the cost in the upper right easier to read.