Flash Back To May

So, flash back to May of 2017 when I sent Kyle Boehnlein a message about a game that I was interested in creating, He agreed to work with me and that's when we started HipLein Industries LLC, A Game Company. I had a prototype of a battle-themed deck builder similar to games like Magic, Pokemon, and Yugioh but instead of it being collectible, everything is included in the initial box. Since Kyle and I both loved to play competitive tactics games, I knew we'd be able to produce a product that we both enjoy but creating something that everyone else likes is the difficult part. This is when we started to create what we now know as, "Gamma Grunts: A Deck Smash Game"

Check out this throw back to our early designs

We started off really clunky where there were rounds of drafting that took sometimes over a half hour to just draft before even getting to play the game. We were also able to work out some initial obstacles during Origins with our friend, Mike Caldwell. Over the next few months it was just a series of lather, rinse, repeat.
-Lather=create/change a mechanic to test in the game.
-Rinse=test it out and figure out what works.
-Repeat=add it to the game until we come up with something to change/add.

Eventually, we were able to play test the game enough and change it to where we really had a game that plays smoothly. Specifically, everyone starts with the same initial deck of cards that include character cards people control, cards that immediately give you draft/victory points (depending on how you play them), and the primary resource of the game.

We'll get into the specifics of what cards are included in the game later but we put a mechanism in the game where you can take the cards you start with, discard them to get draft points, and eventually shuffle them into your deck. This is the key aspect to the game that I find most important to a player winning the game. Knowing when to use the cards in your hand to get more powerful cards and knowing when you need to play the cards from your hand.