Game Designer & Developer | Freedom & Order
A card-driven town-building game where a finite hand, action points, and real worker labor turn each month into a set of competing commitments.
What I do — connect cards, labor, and a growing town
I design and implement the simulation and its card-based interface together. A month starts with four cards and three AP; playing a building card creates a site that still needs residents' labor. The same limited workforce must also support food and production, so choosing a card means committing the town's time as well as an action point.
What I think — make commitment visible before it becomes costly
I want difficult choices to come from competing plans, not uncertainty about the controls. Card previews, target feedback, cancellation, and the month-end forecast help players inspect a decision before committing. Completed buildings reveal nearby land, tying exploration to investment in the town rather than simply moving the camera.
A town shaped by decisions
Each month begins with four cards and three action points. Construction, support, foraging, and foresight compete for those resources. A building card creates a construction site; residents still have to supply the labor that completes it.
The central tension is not simply what to build. It is when to commit, what to postpone, and whether food production can support the labor already promised to construction.
Cards, labor, and time
Players retain at most one card between months and tune a 10–16 card deck. Research adds plans to the collection, while monthly preparation controls when those plans enter the deck. Policies, events, deposits, and expiring contracts create commitments that span multiple months.
The order of effects matters. Food Support followed by Relay produces a different work result from the reverse order. Roads use monthly capacity rather than AP, linking spatial planning to the same labor economy.
Readable interactions and an expanding world
The interface supports lifted card previews, drag-to-target play, cancellation, and a month-end preview. Invalid targets spend nothing. A seeded world of grassland, woodland, and rivers expands beyond the original town; completed buildings permanently reveal nearby land, while camera movement alone never does.
I am developing the game's systems, interaction design, and implementation together. The current CardFirst v3 / 0.6.0 build is a Windows prototype with a Simplified Chinese interface; numerical balance remains provisional.
