The Origin of the Idea
Hello, my name is Aidan, or Graph in some online circles. I've been developing the game Ducks in a Row for some time now, so I thought it would be wise to share my experiences in the game development process. As backers and card game enthusiasts find these posts, I hope to reveal a little bit about myself, as well as what I have learned through this development process. I'll also be using the blog to keep backers up to date on the progress being made towards Ducks in a Row's completion!
The origin of the idea for Ducks in a Row comes from a place you might not expect - the core game mechanics actually borrow a bit from other famous games. I'm not the only attempting to innovate in the card game sphere. Around the time I first came up with the idea, the now-game-of-the-year-nominated card game Balatro was really taking off. It was essentially a simple twist on one of the most classic card games in all of history: Poker. I also remember seeing other games put creative spins on Blackjack, Marbles, and Chess to name a few others.
It got me thinking about how these games work. Poker, for example, is really just a glorified guessing game at its core. You look at what cards you have, and you make educated guesses about what cards the other players have and what cards are in the center. I realized there's a lot of ways you could take that same enjoyment of high-stakes guessing and apply it in different ways. If you have followed any other news on Ducks in a Row or watched the instructional video, you might already see the throughline.
From there was born the origin of the idea. In my free time, I would workshop it a bit more. Like maybe the thing you're trying to guess on isn't groups of different cards but orders of the same ones! Or maybe the focus cards belong to another player, and aren't just in the center of the table. Maybe you get partial information as the game goes on! As much as I could keep talking about this, there are enough to the cool development stories along the way that they warrant their own posts.
Happy Trails!