Arcweave launches Arcjam: The Card Game Challenge with over $800 in prizes

Following from the success of its previous game jams, Arcweave launches first-time game modding and content management challenge.

A short teaser of this year's Arcjam.

Arcweave is a game design tool for creating interactive narratives used by over 20,000 indie studios and developers. Its capacity for managing narrative content in the form of dialogue, questlines, characters, and story has been praised by many a team.

Arcjam with a twist

The narrative power of Arcweave has offered plenty of ground for exploration during previous runs of Arcjam—where participants created wonderful pieces of interactive fiction using the Arcweave software.

Itching to showcase its ever-expanding capacities, the team behind Arcweave now launches a different event. Arcjam: The Card Game Challenge is a unique type of gamejam in which participants have one month to modify and publish their version of a given card game template using only Arcweave—no game development involved!

The default version of the game created by the Arcweave Team.

The jam will run from October 25th till November 25th and will be followed by a one-month voting period. Thanks to Arcjam's generous sponsor Saxion, the first 4 winners will receive prizes worth over $800:

• 2x $100 Amazon gift cards.
• 1x Annual subscription of Discord Nitro premium.
• 1x Annual subscription of Arcweave pro (up to 3 seats).

So, how can you, too, participate?

How to join Arcjam: The Card Game Challenge

Before anything else, you should know we've created a 2-part video tutorial that fully describes setting up, playing, and modding your card game. Make sure you watch it, to familiarise yourself with the game and its modding process.

Let's now see how you can participate in the Arcjam, modify this template into your own vision, and get your chance to win fame and prizes!

1. Get to the jam's page on Itch.io and click Join.
2. Register your team using this form, filling in their names, project roles, and the email addresses they prefer to use for their Arcweave accounts.
3. Check your emails (you and all members of your team) and accept our invitation to join the Card Game Arcweave project.
4. Download, unzip, and run the card game's executable file.
5. Once you have the card game build running, press Alt + C to open the modder's console.
6. Enter the Card Game Arcweave project hash (a short alphanumeric number found in the URL of the Arcweave project after "project/" and before "?board"). Make sure Fetch Assets is checked and click Fetch.
7. Modify your Arcweave project and whenever you want to see these changes reflected in your game build, simply press Fetch again!

If you don't have an Arcweave account, you can create one for free in less than two minutes. A free Arcweave account is all you need to participate in Arcjam.

Play Instructions

To start, download our card game's executable file and run it.

The game is fairly easy to play. You are a powerful magic user confronting adversaries in turn-based spellcasting battles. You and your enemies have a deck of spell cards each and—during your turn—play cards to attack as well as defend. Each battle finishes when the health of any opponent reaches 0.

Each card has scores of:

• attack: the damage it deals (marked at the card's bottom left with a grey circle and the symbol of a dagger).
• health: the damage it can take before getting destroyed (marked with a red diamond at the bottom right).
• cost: the amount of gems you must spend to play it (marked with a blue hexagon).

Puns kill more than spells... The Mansplainticore card.

Additionally, a card may have one or more special abilities:

• charge: the card attacks on the same turn that it is played. (By default, cards wait one turn before they attack.)
• regeneration: if wounded, the card regenerates to full health after one turn.

Once on the table (and immediately, if charging), each card will attack once per turn, targeting:

• one opponent card (if any on the table) or
• the opponent themselves (if no opponent cards are on the table). 

At the beginning of your turn, you automatically draw one card. Then:

1. Choose which cards you want to play—playing a card has a cost in gems. A wizard can play as many cards as they want, as long as they can afford the cost. (A wizard's gems score is marked on their status bar.)
2. Press the "End Turn" button—that's when your cards on the table start attacking the opponent's forces.

The goal of the game is to beat the whole sequence of enemies. If you win, you reach the game's victory screen. If you lose, you get to the defeat screen, where you sob inconsolably.

Simple!

Of course, it all starts with an interactive exchange of intimidating one-liners...

Modding the Game Arcweave Project

Let's have a look at this project and how you can tailor it to your liking.

Game Name

First of all, an easy one—or is it?

Rename the project to whatever your game will be called!

Card Components

On the left sidebar, under the component folder Decks, study some of the card components we've created for you.

Notice that a card component must have:

• a short, catchy name.
• a cover image.
• a couple of string attributes:
  • a short description.
  • the number of times it appears in the deck (times_in_deck).
  • an attack score.
  • a health score.
  • a cost.

• an audio asset set as its bark (asset list).
• special abilities (drag from the Abilities folder into the component list).

To create your cards, duplicate any of the existing ones and modify its attributes' values!

Wizard Components

After creating some cards, it's time to create the wizards that will wield them. To get inspiration, open the component folder called Wizards and look at some examples.

Notice that a wizard component must have:

• the wizard's full name as component name.
• the wizard's portrait as cover image.
• a component lists of the cards the wizard has in their deck. (Try dragging the cards you just created from the component folder into this list!)
• some important stats (string attributes):
  • the wizard's health score—remember, when this drops to zero, the wizard dies.
  • the number of gems the wizard begins the battle with (initial_gems).
  • the maximum number of gems the wizard can reach (max_gems).
  • the color of the wizard's status bar (html_color) in html hex code or name.
• some assets (in asset list attributes):
  • the battle_background displayed when this wizard is the enemy.
  • the audio_theme playing during dialogue and battle.
  • the image of their deck's back side (deck_back).
  • the frame of their deck's front side (deck_front).

Settings Component

Another important component is Settings, the one at the top of the components sidebar.

In this mega-component, you set:

• who the player is (component list).
• the sequence of enemies, in order of appearance.
• attributes for dressing up the game's buttons:
  • button_texture: there are already 2 you can use—but go on, add your own.
  • special_button_html_color: the color the game's important buttons, like Play and End Turn.
• attributes for dressing up the Intro and the End screens:
  • intro_screen_image (asset list).
  • intro_screen_audio (asset list).
  • intro_screen_rich_text (rich text).
  • same for victory_screen_ and defeat_screen_.

Dialogue Sequences

An important aspect of Arcjam has always been creating narrative and lore—and the Card Game Challenge is no different!

By creating your wizards and their spells with descriptions and imagery, you actually build fragments of a game world the rest of us can't wait to explore! What can you do more to solidify this? Write some dialogue, of course!

Before each battle, there is a dialogue sequence between the player and the next enemy. Once you decide who your player will be (see Settings component above), use Arcweave's boards and elements to write your dialogue for each enemy.

How the dialogue sequence looks like in the game...

... and how it looks like in the Arcweave project.

By the way, the 2nd part of our video tutorial is specifically about creating and testing your dialogue trees, so don't miss it!

Questions & support

Arcjam is a great opportunity to have some creative fun and design a game without coding. If you are new to Arcweave—or if you could use some friendly nudging—here are some resources that will definitely help.

Arcweave Discord

The Arcweave Discord server welcome page.

The Arcweave Discord server acts as a central community hub for both Arcweave users and team members. The #jams channel is a dedicated space for all Arcjam discussion and provides an opportunity for community members to find groups and collaborators for the jam.

Whether you require technical support from the Arcweave team or just want to discuss the jam with other likeminded peers, this is the channel for you—especially during the days of the jam! 

As a matter of fact, in preparation for Arcjam 2024, Arcweave is hosting a Discord discussion on October 22nd, 4pm BST. In this event, the Arcweave team will play through the card game template and demonstrate how modding works. If you intend to join Arcjam, you will definitely want to attend—it's your opportunity to ask questions, gain insight, and get a peek at the card game!

The discussion will take place in our #aw-voice channel. Feel free to actively join the call: ask questions in voice or text chat—or just tune it to listen. (Lurkers, we love you too!) Even if you aren't sure about whether you want to join Arcjam, you can still get inspiration and camaraderie. Don't be shy!

Join the server today and mark yourself as interested for the event. We will be randomly selecting one attendee and gifting them one month of Discord Nitro premium, so don't miss out!

If you feel like doing something creative this month, winning up to $700 in prizes, making a game without code, or you just want to have fun with your creative peers, Arcjam: The Card Game Challenge is the ideal opportunity!

We're looking forward to seeing all your weird and wacky wizards in action!