Conflict

Overview

An additional rule made for War, the card game.
Roles: Game Designer, Illustrator.

I applied to a game design program, and as part of the admissions process, I had to create a new rule for the card game “War”. If you are unfamiliar with the rules of War, please refer to this tutorial. I created this rule because I believe that the game would be more enjoyable if faster paced. To achieve that, I made this mechanic make players draw cards more frequently.

Gameplay

When both players draw a card of the same suit, they enter a Conflict. These are the same as Wars, but instead of putting three cards face down before laying one face-up, only one card is placed face down. After that, if both players get cards of the same suit again, you continue the Conflict. Conflicts can turn into Wars if the face-up cards trigger it, and vice versa.

Results

After playing the game with the modified rule, I am happy to report that the results exceeded my expectations. Conflicts would happen often and back to back because of the likelihood of drawing cards of the same suit. That resulted in large amounts of cards being discarded by players more often, thus creating fast-paced games.

When talking to my play tester, he stated that he found the newfound speed enjoyable. We had played a regular game beforehand, and he felt that it went on too long for his liking. Conflicts remedied that complaint he had. He also noted that the quicker pacing made it easier to play another round right after because losing didn’t sting as much as it did in the slower games.

Additionally, it was exciting to see lots of cards be discard after gigantic chains of Wars and Conflicts. In the end, the rule proved to be a great addition to the game.