Orlin’s Castle
November 2024
Team size: 2
Duration: 1 week
Orlin’s Castle was designed as a weekly assignment for the UW Game Design certificate. The focus for any assignment was to come up with a game idea, design the high-level features as quickly as possible, and focus on a single facet of design in particular each week. For this week, the focus was narrative design on playing cards.
We knew early on that rarity would be a key factor in how the story was told, so the cards are organized by rows of increasing rarity. The columns represent one of the three factions. When we were coming up with how the game would be played, we thought it would be fun to make a deck-builder rogue-lite that would involve throwing the cards in your deck as ammunition.
With the story, our goal was to build a simple, generic world where the plot and conflict played out in the contrasts in how the cards themselves played. A mad king, his spurned brother, and the princess who rejected both of them are fighting for control of the kingdom. The left-most column is Orlin’s deck, which focuses on mobility. The middle is The Shadow King’s, which focuses on raw damage. The right-most is The Princess of Lilies’ deck, which focuses on support and healing.
We wanted the main boss of each run to be the one whose deck you last completed a run with, beginning with Orlin when nothing was beaten. The goal was to make the interactions in cards more stark, and the narrative more clear, through the strengths and weaknesses each had.
The Shadow King’s raw power beats Orlin’s Speed. Orlin’s mobility beats the meticulous planning required by The Princess’ deck. And the Princess’ healing and buffs would scale to outpace The Shadow King through the planning that is her downfall against Orlin.