Hive//Mind Devlog thus far

As seen in placeholder form on Games page, we're making a card game! We've been tossing ideas around for a little over a year now (started November-ish 2022), and some amazing progress has taken shape. As of this writing, the game has its core mechanics nailed down (though balancing is still in progress), a plan for set distribution, a working testing environment in Tabletop Simulator, and Alpha graphics... but I've realized I haven't done much writing about the game itself outside of brief mentions in group chats. So let's put it all together and get you (nebulous) caught up!

The genesis of Hive//Mind (hereafter HiveMind or HM) was my polycule's shared realization that Magic kinda sucks now, actually. And that many other TCGs both rising and established were making similar gameplay or PR decisions to Wizards and would eventually tend a similar direction. This mutual frustration led to brainstorming about what would make a better game and a couple very rough sketches:

A day or two later I turned the rough sketches into less-rough digital files to tweak until we felt right about things. Some of those tweakings can be seen below. Some iterations are more drastically different than others.

We're quite happy with the current visuals but all things are of course subject to change.

As proud as I am of my vector doings for these, graphics alone do not a great game make!
(take that, triple-A studios)
The core concepts of HiveMind have been ironed out at this point, but we continue to brainstorm and explore the design space in pursuit of fun. To turn our scribblings into cards, I've leveraged a fan-made custom card program called Magic Set Editor (hereafter 'MSE') and edited the absolute hell out of it. I've written over 1500 lines of code for this now!

​I've put a whole ton of work into the card editor files to make it as easy as possible to turn our ideas into workable, printable cards! Here's a brief six-card showcase of various features... few of which you're likely to understand at the moment, but go with me here:

This six-card "sheet" is itself generated by a deckloader python script I wrote which will stitch together all the card faces indicated in a loosely-formatted decklist file. It's a powerful tool when testing in Table Top Simulator. It should also be massively helpful when we approach print-readiness.

Using an intentionally-limited palette, I think I've created a rather striking visual style... even for the flat 'alpha' graphics they are! 

I realize you won't know what most of this means right now. That's intentional. Feel free to speculate~

Rules balancing and documentation is in the works... more Developments are soon to come!