Magic and Possibility in 52 Cards
Why do game designers love the standard card deck?
It’s hard not to pick up a deck of cards and not feel at least somewhat enchanted by the possibilities that a deck of cards represents. If the number of Kickstarter campaigns (and Instagram ads) I see for new and custom decks of cards, I imagine this feeling is widely shared.
But what makes the deck of cards such an intriguing concept for designers and non-designers alike?
Localthunk, the developer of the award winning game Balatro, put it best:1
There’s something magical about the shared language of card games
But what is that shared language? And how do cards communicate it? And why do designers like it so much?
The Player Perspective
52 card decks pack a lot of symbology in a relatively small punch. They evoke feelings of royalty, gambling, mysticism, and a connection to the past. They feel like they have the latent energy of that possibility, depending on what your imagination would like to grab onto at any given time, and as a result they can send your imagination shooting off in one of a myriad different directions.
There’s also a surprising amount of variability in the complexity that card games can hold within them, which I think adds to the mysticism. The concept of a game like war (bigger number wins) is easy enough to understand that you can play it as a kid, but the complexity of a game like Euchre, Hearts, or Bridge feels distant and mystical. And it’s the same deck that holds both of those things. I like to joke that if Cribbage were a published board game the designs would be too complicated to actually convince anyone to buy into. You care about the numbers 15 and 31. Also the suit of a Jack if it’s on top of the deck, but also runs are good, pairs are good, and it’s kind of a racing game.2
As Polygon explains in an excellent article on card games, they hold a shocking amount of deep math that we can touch the surface of every time we play but never fully understand.3 Basically, it’s a Swiss army knife of ludic potential.
The Designer Perspective
From a design perspective, rules are far and away the hardest things to get players to overcome when you’re trying to make something. Articulating a set of rules is just hard. Having something that already has footholds that you can use to communicate your intent is incredible. And the 52 card deck especially is the type of “design system”4 that you can tune to your specific needs. And the breadth of cultural potential that a 52 card deck has means you can pick which ideas you’re most interested in exploring. The deck also has a history of allowing you to tune it to the specifications that you need. Lots of games might be played only with the 1-8 cards, or 1 fewer suit. Or no Jokers, or including Jokers!
The 52 card deck also has the distinction of being a tool you can take almost anywhere, requires minimal setup and that you can get up and running almost immediately to test and play around with. And, as mentioned in the player perspective, there’s a huge wealth of game design ideas that you can tap into and riff on.
The Games
Yomi
Yomi is a two player battle card game by David Sirlin. It takes the idea of what if you took a fighting video game and turned it into a tabletop experience, where instead of landing coordinated moves, you were planning sets of cards to play in order to outwit your opponent.
Yomi has the distinction of combining two very ancient themes. The 52 card deck and rock paper scissors. Each turn you would play a card (face down) which would either be attack, defense, or grapple. You were trying to guess which card your opponent had available so you could either break their combos or start your own. And each card also corresponded to a 52 card deck, which helped understand their relative power level.
Yomi was the first game I remember playing in college where I was like “oh you can do that with design?” It has a ridiculous number of design ideas but it captures the feeling of playing a fighting game so well, and the theme of the 52 card deck fits in perfectly.
Regicide
Regicide is the only game on this list that can 100% be played with a 52 card deck, but the art is so cool I think it’s worth buying a copy anyway. This is a cooperative or solo game where your goal is to work your way through defeating the royalty (the Jacks, Queens, and Kings), by playing the right set of cards. Each turn you’ll face a royal card, and play out either a single card or a set, in order to deal them damage to try to defeat them while defending yourself.
The challenge of the game comes from a few clever usage of the suits. Firstly, each suit has it's own special power. Hearts heal, Clubs attack, Spades defend, and so on. But secondly, the power is turned off for the suit of the royal that you’re attacking. So when you’re attacking the Jack of Hearts you can’t heal, and so on. Each turn after you play cards, the royalty gets a chance to attack back which gives it this boss-fight haymaker sort of feel where you’re trading blows to defeat each other.
Card Shark
The final game on this list is also the only video game. And this one manages to capture the royalty and skulduggery of the 52 card deck. This is a game all about cheating. Your goal is to connive your way into building your skills at sleight of hand so you can purloin French royalty out of their money. The game is built on real card counting tricks and the art style is incredible to match.
What’s most fun about the game is that instead of telling you that you’re “doing sleight of hand”, it asks you to complete a set of sequences in order to manage the sleight and then will succeed or fail you based on your ability to actually accomplish it.
What Game Have Inspired You?
What 52 card inspired games have I missed? Let me know in the comments.
Thanks for reading!
This was on a recent episode of The AIAS Game Maker’s Notebook
Small tangent, the Zachtronics Solitaire Collection has an excellent Cribbage solitaire game that I find incredibly fun.
Geoff Engelstein’s excellent GameTek book, a collection of essays on the math and science of game design, devotes a chapter to the combinatorics of uniqueness and shuffling a deck of cards. Wherein, he posits one shuffle is good enough to create a unique 52 card sequence. Woah!
What a boring name for a cool concept.