tarot-kah

goal

TOOLS

TIMESPAN

create an analog game with a group

figma

7 weeks

ideation

To initiate this project, my game design teacher had everyone come up with a small blurb of a game idea and post it on a forum. We all then voted on the ideas we liked the best, and the teacher made groups based on our votes.

Luckily, I got my first choice!

The initial pitch was a card game based on tarot cards that used a deck building mechanism to combat your opponents with.

inspiration

Because of the vagueness of the initial pitch, we had to get some inspiration of how we wanted the game to work. One member of the group had a game called Sushi Go! that we played and liked so much that we decided to model our game off of it.

base mechanics

GOAL

gather up as many points as possible. the player with the most points wins

There are 3 rounds in a game. Each player gets 8 cards that they can look at but keep to themselves.

Each turn happens simultaneously. On a turn, each player takes one card from their hand, and places it face-down in front of them. Once all players have done this, everyone flips their cards to be face-up. These cards are now considered to be part of a player’s Spread, and any on-play effects take place.

After revealing their chosen cards, each player passes their remaining hand face-down to the player on their left, and continue playing with that new hand.

The face-up cards in the Spread stay in front of the players until the end of the round - unless someone plays a card to change that!

Once all of the cards have been played, and each hand is empty, the round is over. After each round, each player adds their score for that round to their total score.

Playthrough animation coming soon!!

minor arcana

Because the Minor Arcana are the majority of a regular tarot deck, we decided to use them as the base strategy of the game.

You can take a look at the designs down below!

Through playtesting, we were able to balance the cards so that there were advantages and disadvantages to all, as exemplified here in this graph.

It was not only important to compare the base cards against each other, but with the effects of the Major Arcana as well, as can be seen with the effects of the swords with the Major Arcana Strength in play.

major arcana

Each of the Major Arcana cards has a special and unique effect that changes how the game is played. Some of these cards have effects which occur when they are added to a player’s Spread. In the case that several players have such effects occurring during the same turn, the effects are resolved in the order of the Major Arcana’s card number.

For example, if a Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man, and Judgement card all get played on the same turn, they would resolve in the order of Wheel of Fortune, The Hanged Man, and then Judgement, in accordance with the card’s numbers (10, 12, and 20)

these first cards involve all of the minor arcana

these cards all target only one minor arcana suit

these allow for players to change up the hands

these allow for players to change up the hands

these allow for players to change the spreads

card back

For the back, I decided to base the design off of paintings from the 15th century when tarot was invented. I took inspiration from the painting "The Holy Trinity. Fragment" by Tommaso Masaccio, which is currently in The Church Of Santa Maria Novella, Florence.

I wanted to incorporate the architecture that was so prevalent in renaissance paintings and mix it with a trope of card backs where they are symmetrical, hence the vertical mirroring effect.

I also kept along with my previously established pattern of using texture in the background.

design thinking

colors

With all the suits in mind, I assigned a color to each one that was representative of that suit.

Major Arcana - Gold because of their major impact on gameplay
Coins - Silver because coins can be silver, and are lesser to gold
Cups - Pink because they are related to love in traditional tarot cards, and could be associated with a love potion
Swords - Red because swords spill blood
Wands - Purple because it tends to be a very common color associated with magic and wizards/witches

I decided on using gradients with these colors because of the simplicity of the lineart that is used in the illustrations. It brings more interest to the cards, and makes them all look a bit more magical as well.

I knew I wanted the backgrounds of the cards to be dark in color because tarot is often correlated to dark magic and the occult, but I had to come up with ways to make each card distinct from each other. I first did this by coming up with a color scheme for each suit.

Even though these colors are very similar when you look at them like this, when combined with the brighter colors above, the colors become more distinct.

This is an example of the imagery displayed on each card in each category and how the colors are used in each.

accessibility

I thought a lot about how to differentiate each card even more apart from color and illustration to allow for colorblind players to be able to tell the cards apart better at a glance.

I landed on adding different textures to each type of card. Even though it is subtle, it is pretty noticeable when playing.

I also wanted to add more graphical difference between the edges of the cards so it would be easy to tell if a card was backwards without having to look at the whole card. I did this by making the border a single line on the card back, and more intricate on the card front.

For all users, it was important to include multiple types of identification for each card, such as:

number of the card
card name/suit
card description/directions
name of the game the card belongs to (on the card back)

playtesting

Because of the amount cards we have and of strategy that our game involves, we had to do a lot of playtesting to make sure the game was not only playable, but enjoyable. This allowed us to balance the game, which was a pretty difficult task.

Some of the cards that were changed the most due to playtesting and trying new mechanics are Justice, The Fool, The World, The Star, Swords, and Wands. The most important changes were to Swords and Wands because they are part of the base mechanics. They also changed the way the game was played because of the change in strategy as a response to the change in mechanic.

contact me

email elena.cuadra.berg@gmail.com

linkedin Elena Berg

I currently live in Pittsburgh, PA :)

Product Designer