Blue Collection is live (One Card Crawler)
Update: One Card Dungeon is live on Kickstarter as part of the Blue Collection of micro games along with Cyberdoom Tower and Insert Coin to Play, and the campaign will run for 20 days. You may back just one or all three games, or purchase them as PnP. Custom dice and t-shirts are available as add-ons.
Our preview post below was published on May 13.
One Card Dungeon is a solitaire micro dungeon crawler game played on one card. The goal is to go through 12 dungeon levels and survive the whole dive! It was originally released as PnP and won the Best Solitaire Game and Best Rulebook categories in the 2020 - 1 Card Print and Play Design Contest on BGG. It will launch on Kickstarter on May 18 along with Cyberdoom Tower (soloable) and Insert Coin To Play (non-solo).
The Dungeon card has two sides. At the bottom of the card you can see the Monster’s stats (health, movement, attack, defense, and range) for that level, and if you turn the card upside down, you’ll see the stats for the Monster of another level. Most of the card's surface is covered with a grid of squares - the dungeon floor.
To set up a dungeon level, you place your adventurer (a die showing ‘6’ at the beginning because you start with 6 health) and the enemies on the little squares of the corresponding levels (for instance, you’ll place two spiders on level 1, but four spiders on level 9). The enemies are also represented by dice the faces of which show their current health. You also set dice beside the Dungeon card to show your stat levels, starting with 1 movement, 1 attack, 1 defense, and 2 range.
The game is played over a series of rounds until you either clear the level or die. First, you roll three ‘Energy’ dice that will act as bonus modifiers to all your stats save range. Then, you can move and attack according to your move and attack values for the round. Moving orthogonally costs 2 movement points, moving diagonally costs 3. If an enemy is within range, you can attack it. To deal one hit, you must spend as many attack points as the defense value of the enemy. You can freely alternate attacks and moves during a round as long as you can afford it.
Then, the monsters move first and then attack in a similar fashion (they don’t use hit-and-run tactics). When moving, they will always try to have you in range so they can attack, while being as far from you as possible.
Once you have cleared a dungeon, you can either set your health back to 6 or permanently increase one of your four stats by one pip. You then flip or rotate the card to go to the next level. Each side/orientation of the card has a different monster type. Once you’ve gone through the four side/orientation combinations, you re-start at the beginning, but there will now be more monsters (so you'll fight spiders on levels 1, 5, and 9). There are three such cycles before you reach the twelfth and final level. If you clear it, you have beaten the game!
Once the dice die, you level up. But if your die dies, it's game over... I've suddenly got an idea for my own game now: Die dice, die!
So my character is a die 🎲 and the enemies are dice 🎲🎲 as well?.... I pronounce myself sold on the gimmick!