Design Vision: Poker ALL Toads

Writing 'design visions' for games is something I've always loved doing. I think I made like a long one for Islands of Insight, both before playing (talking about my vision for what the game could be) and after testing. I have basically never been idealess after playing a game, except after maybe playing a Chris Souvey lingo map (which is a huge compliment to that designer).

Poker ALL Toads is a game that combines a few ideas I had about incremental game progression, trick playing card design, social world design, as well as the excellent 3D models and idea of the expansions of the world from "Poke ALL Toads Roleplay". However, unless you play an early version of the game for 3 minutes while ignoring all the systems in it very disrespectfully, you will discover the game has far deeper ambitions than that.

In a way, I do wonder if it'll be awkward that it's secretly puzzle-like when showing the game to other puzzle fans. Think about it like how you can play an MMO like World of Warcraft in a 'puzzle-like' way, where there are strats to be more effective, speedrun strats, etc. and while the gameplay has a polished, satisfying feel. I want to distill that feeling into this.

Here's everything I'm putting into this project. In short: incremental with strategy in its skilltree, quality pvp mechanics, world exploration, events, metroidvania elements and secrets, or even shorter, a Poke ALL Toads MMO.

World Exploration

Finding exploits and secrets in worlds is fun, but is theoretically even more fun with friends. With metroidvania-like mechanics, I am planning to have tons of teasers for stuff, hard-to-reach stuff that will be incredible for people to potentially get to.

I'll keep this a bit 'secret' for now but I played a 3D platformer, over 10 years ago probably, where all of the ways you can get to new places truly have embedded themselves deep in my mind. I literally imagine real-world places as if they worked like that game sometimes. A new player of that game would probably take a while to find them. Sadly I don't know of a single playthrough in which the player has recorded their progression, from the slow unexpected realization of how unbelievably powerful and in-control they are at the start of the game. I now have the ability to potentially slam this idea into the player's soul even harder.

Exploits in 3D worlds in general are fun, and there was even a shockingly unintuitive 4-step combo in the Poke ALL Toads world this game was based upon, that I unfortunately never got to show off. Because of (roblox + the world) being a disaster, the chat (and now playing this entire game) got disabled unless you want a privacy-violating face-saving-data-storing age verification, and thus I never got to use it during an event.

Incrementals, Paradigm Shifts, and Poker Mechanics

Incrementals, and really all MMO's (MMO's are basically like, incremental games with more fights, we can call it an ice cold take) are all about contrast in dealing small numbers and having 'weak' abilities at the start and then growing to something way cooler and bigger at the end.

With poker already having all these hands, there is already a lot of design space. Balatro showed some of the design space too. (I had an idea for a poker roguelike and created the cards/hand animation before I ever knew of that game it was going to be more magic-trick and deck-mechanic centered though)

There's a mechanic I haven't yet been sure of yet: whether players should have an inventory of cards that could be used to do something ingame or unlock something. Could imagine a 6 of Diamonds does a huge boost jump in the air or something, or you could collect cards on the ground to make certain hands and unlock doors. This could be cool but also feel too unjustified if not done well, so this is a TODO to think about at the moment!

Basically making 'machines' or various builds that involve poker hands as the inputs/midsteps/outputs, different types of poker cards and modifiers, definitely something I love and want to do.

Intentionally losing the active gameplay part of it?

As it is right now, you simply draw 1 card every 10 seconds and the hand scores when you reach 5 cards (or upon a full hand, if you have a higher handsize). This, to me, removes the opportunity cost for thinking about the skilltree, you're not pausing progression just because you're looking at the skilltree menu. There is also the chance to get a 'cursed' card to make it more interesting to look at as well.

Now the problem is that this might be too unstandard and that some people actually love to obsessively press button to make progress, as it would seem from one tester. Maybe earlygame having buttons to draw a card while having quick automation would be needed. I just find that this is an aspect of incrementals I find unhealthy and addictive and detracts from the hangout aspect, because this game takes place in a 3D world and I want people to feel included if they want to just join and explore the world while not interacting with the skilltree aspects too, a similar vibe to playing an MMO just to look at the world.

Friendly Competitions

In the "Poke ALL Toads Roleplay events" (in which um, people didn't really roleplay at all) the host set up minigames in ways that, best-executed, were fun to score well, perform well, and it was fun to exploit as well. MMO events are similar in this feeling of being special and unexpected.

What I'll have to deal with is to make enough events it feels fun/exclusive/handcrafted without a host, of course.

In an old version of Poker ALL Toads, the progression was that you'd get random cards but have to make them on a 2D board while dodging or poking toads. This 2D board would then get larger and you'd have to 'compete' (it was singleplayer at the time) to spot potential hands quickly enough to snatch them up. This might also be fun but would be a side minigame, of which I am potentially hesitant to do if it might make the game seem overly complex instead of new content or testing that the core game is appealing.

Duelling Creeds

My game has duels. Upon poking another player, both players get 15 seconds to pick potential perks in a mini skilltree and then automatically fight using the same mechanics as the base game (but with much faster card draw). This is incentivized by an 8 second Ultracharge if you win, and is also the most 'active' part of the game, with the hope this is way more interesting than obsessively spamclicking buttons like you'd do in a normal incremental.

One feature that's already in it is that the complexity of the perk skilltree in the duel is scaled down to the lowest level player involved in it.

Daily/Weekly Events

This is another thing that could allow for an interesting challenge and make people or friendgroups come back. I haven't implemented it because I cannot keep this promise without an audience or the game being successful enough. I mean, I know other games have generated daily puzzles but I want all my stuff to be higher quality than that

Poke ALL Toads Characterization

Poke ALL Toads itself has a lot of characters with their own 'abilities'. To reimagine them in a 3D environment with 3D abilities would be absolutely sick, and with the toad tongue, character morphing, and FPS game mechanics, there's a lot I could potentially do. So far, I've only implemented left and right hand pokes for the fairies. I guess I saved this very important paragraph for last because absolutely no work has yet been done on it.

Conclusion

It's quite surreal to write this article and be puzzle-focused, considering how much the theming of this game appears to not be puzzle-focused, and this ties back into my theming article from not too long ago, of not calling the game a puzzle game for potentially more appeal.

Finally I'd like to tease a 'series' coming where I argue that actually other genres are 'puzzle adjacent' or also puzzle games. I've written like 3 articles about that so far, can't wait to post them.