"Having been online for 5 years, the niche but highly praised 'KARDS' - What inspirations has it brought to card games? | Game Product Observation"
Text | Ruiyang Feng
Editor | Shiwu Liu
In 1993, "Magic: The Gathering" pioneered the gameplay of Collectible Card Game (abbreviated as CCG). In this type of game, players build their personalized card decks through certain methods and use this deck to battle with other players. At the beginning of this century, physical card games represented by "Pokémon" became popular worldwide, and the unit price of its rare physical cards even reached millions of RMB.
However, more than thirty years have passed, the game categories have become more diverse, and the technological development has also made the game operations more complex, the calculations more massive, and the graphics more rich. In addition, as players' time is more fragmented and the pace of life is accelerating, players also need games with more intense and rapid positive feedback.
According to Newzoo statistics, in 2024, the global strategy game market share accounted for less than 10% of video games, far lower than the 17% of shooting games and other categories of games. The popularity of traditional card games seems to be gradually fading - the core "strategic" and "slow-paced" nature of card games seems out of place as players need more direct stimulation.
However, there are still some exceptions. The World War II-themed card game "KARDS", released in 2020, received "Very Positive" reviews on the Steam store. Since its launch four years ago, the number of concurrent users in the Steam community has increased instead of decreased, and the number of concurrent users including the mobile terminal has reached the ten-thousand level.
Image Source: "KARDS"
"KARDS" was developed by the Icelandic studio 1939 Games and is the studio's only work to date. How does such a small but beautiful game gain players' recognition with its gameplay innovation, theme style, and long-term operation?
Innovative Card Mechanism
The rules and victory methods of the "KARDS" game are relatively simple. Before the start of the game, players need to select 40 cards to build their own card deck. These cards include unit cards and instruction cards. Units have different deployment costs, action costs, attack power, defense power, special effects, and so on.
After the game starts, players will draw several initial cards and obtain a command point slot. The player's headquarters initially has 20 defense points. Then the two players take turns to act. In each round, a card is drawn and a command point slot is added. Players can use the command points to deploy or operate units and use instructions. When the defense of one of the headquarters reaches zero, the other side wins.
However, such simple rules have derived a very large number of card decks and gameplay due to the diverse cards. For example, the fast-attack card deck carries a large number of low-cost unit cards, quickly plays and attacks after the start of the game, making it impossible for the opponent to deal with it in time, and deals a large amount of damage in four or five rounds. Another example is that the water-cutting card deck consumes all the opponent's hand cards by using instruction cards to make the opponent discard cards or unable to draw cards, and then takes the opportunity to defeat the opponent.
"KARDS" Soviet classic self-harm style card deck
The effects of different cards cooperate with each other to build, and thus a restraint relationship is generated between the lineups. Players not only need to consider how to make their card deck exert the maximum effect, but also need to consider how to restrain the opponent. Therefore, designing the card deck according to the environment, choosing the cards to play according to one's own hand, and solving the situation according to the opponent's situation... These characteristics make the game have strong strategic and playable.
Compared with previous collectible card games, "KARDS" has added a "frontline" mechanism, which makes the unit mobility, attack distance, and whether to seize the frontline also become the content that players can consider and decide. At the same time, different types of units have obvious differences in ability. Tanks and infantry units can only attack units in adjacent frontlines, while artillery and aircraft units can attack in the rear. Tanks can move and attack in each round, but the other units can only operate once; when using bombers to attack, they will not be damaged themselves, but when there are fighter jets in the same frontline of the opponent, the bombers can only attack the fighter jets first.
Image Source: "KARDS"
These mechanisms make the movement and attack order more important. Sometimes, if a unit with a special effect is deployed, placing it in the rear may be able to increase its survival probability to continuously trigger the special effect, but pushing it to the frontline can attack the enemy unit and prevent the opponent from taking the frontline. Therefore, players need to carefully weigh the consequences of different operations, thereby enhancing the playability of the game.
Incorporating the World War II Theme Both Inside and Outside the Game
Although gameplay innovation is good, it is difficult for a new game to stand out in the highly competitive card game market with this alone. And the unique theme style of "KARDS" also makes it highly recognizable and attracts a large number of players.
Previous card games are mainly based on fantasy and science fiction themes, such as "Hearthstone" and "Magic: The Gathering". Their advantage is that cards can have various interesting settings and functions. In addition, designing cards with the help of a mature IP can also attract the audience of that IP and quickly increase the player base. However, these settings that are too disconnected from reality increase the difficulty for players to familiarize themselves with the cards at the initial stage of entry, and to a certain extent, make non-heavy players feel confused or dazzled.
"Hearthstone" uses the World of Warcraft series' worldview
In contrast, "KARDS" is themed on World War II, and all the main countries and units have prototypes in reality, which makes players who have a certain understanding of history and war feel familiar. "KARDS" incorporates the World War II theme into various aspects of the game, including cards, art, music, stories, and seasons.
First, in the game, players can choose one country from the five countries of Britain, the United States, Japan, Germany, and the Soviet Union as an ally, and choose one country from the above countries or France, Italy, Poland, Finland, etc. as an ally.
Each card deck needs to include at least 28 main country cards. The unit cards in these cards are the real troops and weapons of the country, and the instruction cards are historical events, policies, and ideological trends related to the country, and the headquarters card in the game will be a famous city of the country.
Image Source: "KARDS"
Secondly, the art and music also provide players with a full sense of immersion.
The background music in the game selects popular songs from the World War II period and will be played when the player or the opponent uses the corresponding main country. For example, the British war-time love song "We'll Meet Again", the German anti-war song "Lili Marleen", and the Soviet song "На сопках Маньчжурии" in memory of the deceased comrades.
And the card face of each card in the game is a poster from the World War II period or an illustration of a similar style, and there are many familiar classic pictures. When the player operates the Leopold with the restored card face and deals a low "bang" and a large amount of 6-point damage, it seems to return to the battlefield that was full of expectations for victory but haunted by blood and tears at that time.
Image Source: "KARDS"
Choosing a specific background to design the game can not only find a large number of settings and materials from history and war, but also use stories and sentiments to give players a richer experience outside the game mechanism. For this type of game, as long as it can be restored appropriately and delicately, it can often attract a certain scale of vertical players to achieve a player group with high stickiness even without the support of an IP.
Moderate and Appropriate Operation
For similar games, the balance between the "degree of grinding", "degree of spending", and "card collection speed" is a difficulty in operation. If players collect cards too quickly, it may lead to the game being boring or unable to sell card packs, and if players collect cards too slowly, players will always not be able to play a complete card deck, affecting the game experience.
Generally speaking, in terms of "grinding", players can collect cards to build a card deck by completing daily or weekly tasks, participating in regular in-game small competitions and winning awards, and receiving rewards at the end of the season. In terms of "spending", similar games often require more than one 648 to purchase card packs to obtain a complete card deck with combat power and the ability to play in ranked matches.
And in this regard, "KARDS" can not only take into account the experience of new players after entry, but also ensure that players will not be unable to play the game due to the excessive lack of card decks. For example, the "fast-attack" card deck mentioned above is often composed mostly of copper and iron cards (lower-grade and lowest-grade cards), and requires very few gold and silver cards (best-grade and better-grade cards), and does not rely on these high-grade cards. That is to say, any player can download and play for free and start with several card decks.
Of course, for players, playing similar card decks for a long time will lead to aesthetic fatigue. Or out of love for a particular country, they want to use it as the main country and complete a specific tactic. At this time, players will actively have the desire to collect more card decks.
At the same time, "KARDS" has also designed a more affordable "monthly card", allowing players to obtain a very comfortable game experience after a moderate amount of grinding and spending. Its price varies in each region, about 80 RMB per month. Whether players purchase the monthly card or not, they can obtain a certain progress of the "weekly treasure chest" by means of weekly activity, opening duplicate cards, and upgrading the main country level; the role of the "monthly card" is to upgrade the level of the weekly treasure chest.
In the case of having a "monthly card" and playing the game for four or five hours per week, players can always get the "Elite" treasure chest, which provides a self-selected gold card, a resource silver card, and two random flash silver cards, so that the player's card acquisition speed is slightly faster than the speed of the season update to launch new cards, and the player can freely choose the favorite card deck for synthesis.
The universal cards obtained through the weekly treasure chest can be used to make any card
The other value-added items in the "KARDS" game are nothing more than ornaments on the game table, which do not provide any attribute bonuses, do not affect the game balance, and are consistent with the overall tone of the game.
Although it caused dissatisfaction among some players due to a special offer in the game, its better modeling and texture and the ability to display the time in real time are still recognized by players. It is worth mentioning that the items on the game table can be clicked for certain interactions. Even the ants on the Japanese army's game table will quickly run away after the player continuously pokes the table. This makes the player not too bored while waiting for the opponent to play.
"KARDS" is also relatively restrained in activities. During holidays, at most, some discount card packs with purchase limit are launched, and there will be no situation where other games force players to spend by launching a large number of discounts or limited-time skins.
This relatively restrained and appropriate operation has brought many highly sticky players to "KARDS", making the number of players in "KARDS" increase instead of decrease in the past five years and achieving the long-term development of the game.
Conclusion
Nowadays, in the game industry, it is often heard that "games that do not invest a lot of resources, do not buy traffic, and do not rely on mature IPs have no way out". The success of "KARDS" is a response to this, and it may bring inspiration to indie games.
This article was first published on "36Kr Games".