Hacker News Reader

Comment by blindseer | Hacker News Reader

If you could put even a single button on the "card" itself, then it'll open up a whole layer of game design.

This isn't an actual game, but I'm thinking it would be great to pick a card face up that's "red" and be able to make a decision to turn it into "cyan". Others could pick "green" and "blue" face up, but can click a button to turn it to something else, and then the game resolves itself when everyone reveals it. Like if everyone can discuss and if everyone reveals the primary colors everyone wins.

I'm sure there's interesting game mechanics you can come up with when you give a decision to the player.

Additionally, I think this could make an interesting programmable suite of games. You don't have to sell just one game.

View on HN

Agree on the suite of games, just like a deck of cards :)

Ah, the cards have buttons next to them on the base. I figured they could display icons on the card next to each button (each spot on the base has 3 right now). I call it the 'ATM' style UX.

Those are commonly called "soft keys" [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_key

Ah! Finally, I have a word for it!

A little switch on the card might be useful though. Especially if it can be set/unset by the base station (might be getting mechanically complicated).

For example, perhaps a game that has a general flow of: players have their cards, there’s a central base station, but most play is not digital. Maybe they somehow battle their cards, they can go around and battle people as much as they want, but their “moves” are tied to the switches and when they use a move, they flick the switch off (wonder if it could be made to actually get stuck in position, to provide physical feedback indicating that the moves are “used up.”)

Then, when they want, they go back to the Pokécenter — I mean, oops, base station. It recharges their abilities (unflips the switches), maybe runs some “level up” logic, etc etc.

I mean, this quickly started to stretch credibility as far as the mechanism goes, but the idea of giving the players/game designers a couple bits of state that they can toggle away from the base station might allow more asynchronous type games.

Whoah, interesting. I might noodle on that idea a bit.

Also a "write" push-button-switch could be useful if you have wireless update and are playing with less than scrupulously honest people (or children). Otherwise they might say the card "changed", because of a bug or similar excuse.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com