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Mechanic Monday: Corruption Deck Thinner

Wow I’ve been quiet for a while, huh? Not because I haven’t been thinking about game design, or because my interest has been elsewhere - I’ve just been too fucking busy with my dayjob to write any design or theatre or much of fucking anything! It’s been the fucking worst.  But it’s evening out now, and I am committed to getting back on track with this damn blog. Mechanic Monday has been one of the most consistent pieces of writing I’vd done (loLLLLLLLLLLL) and I want to get in the groove again. So much so that I’m currently typing this on my damn phone.
So I’ve been thinking about solitaire stuff again.  After getting together a first proto and playtest of FGM-Squared, but then being stuck alone at my desk for days and nights for weeks at a time, my design brain has been mulling over the maple-distilling game I wrote about on here a few months back (called Amber Lodge at the time, I’m thinking of calling it Amber Mill or Samara) as well as a napkin-sketch of an idea about a solo deck-thinner based around removing corruption from your deck but your only tools are, themselves, corrupt.  And the latter is the subject of today’s post, but just to flannel on for a bit here; I think there’s something really special and important about solitaire games, and designing games where the player count is simply “1”. No variants, no coop mode, just - an intent to create an experience that embraces and enhances the alone-ness. An escaping, a honing, that allows you to cultivate a skill both through and against yourself. I think keeping that thrust as a throughline of your design is something that digital folks completely understand but are also on the whole maybe starting to forget and move away from, whereas the boardgame design space has largely only cracked open the door every now and then.  I don’t know. I just love a game that’s just for me, ya know?
Anyway, here’s this week’s mechanic.

Fighting Corruption with Corruption
In THE PRODIGAL, you are a rebel heir to the Ashen Crown.  You defy the rest of demonkind by setting out to free the stolen souls of the wrongfully imprisoned Innocents, and slaying any Unjust that stand in your way.  At the start of the game, the deck is filled with Unjust, who can be used as Weapons or banished from the deck as defeated demons, and up to 11 Innocents, who must be freed before they appear three times and are lost forever.  The twist is that using Unjust cards as weapons corrupts you, and the appearance of Innocents removes corruption. You must strike a careful balance between freeing the Innocents and weeding out the Unjust, without letting Innocents appear too often or gaining too much Corruption.

As I typed this up, it started to come together in my mind.  I think that there’s some tinkering to do with how you gain Corruption and what Unjust cards do in your hand even when you don’t play them, and I would need to look at how you free Innocents, but I can envision a fun core, a Dominion-Duchy-rush-esque balance between when to clear your deck of Corruption gainers and Corruption mitigaters.  Anyway we’ll see, it’s now 1am on Tuesday but I did it all before Monday ends somewhere so I’ll take it. Til next time, whenever that is!

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