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.
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, dressed up by the Arcweave Team, who can't wait to see how you'll modify everything according to your vision.
The jam will run from October 25th till November 25th and will be followed by a one-month voting period. The first 3 winners will receive prizes worth over $700:
So, how can you, too, participate?
Before anything else, download our card game's executable file and run it.
The download link for the card game's executable will be published HERE, as well as the Itch page, once the jam starts!
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:
Puns kill more than spells... The Mansplainticore card.
Once on the table, each card will attack once per turn, targeting:
At the beginning of your turn, you automatically draw one card. Then:
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...
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!
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.
Purchase of a paid Arcweave plan is not required!
Let's have a look at this project and how you can tailor it to your liking.
First of all, an easy one—or is it?
Rename the project to whatever your game will be called!
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:
times_in_deck).bark (asset list attribute).attack score.health score.cost.To create your cards, duplicate any of the existing ones and modify its attributes' values!
Make sure you preserve the attributes' names and types or your game will now work properly.
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:
cards the wizard has in their deck. (Try dragging the cards you just created from the component folder into this list!)battle_background displayed when this wizard is the enemy.audio_theme playing during dialogue and battle.deck_back).deck_front).An asset list can contain multiple assets, but only the first of them will be used in the card game. You can still keep more assets hanging around, in case you need to quickly switch from one to the other for testing.
Another important component is Settings, the one at the top of the components sidebar.
In this mega-component, you set:
player is (component list).enemies, in order of appearance.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.intro_screen_image (asset list).intro_screen_audio (asset list).intro_screen_rich_text (rich text).victory_screen_ and defeat_screen_.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.
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.
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!