The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #446: Thoughts on Game Design and Ideas on a Homebrew Tomb Raider Card Game

Years ago, I experimented with making my own Tomb Raider video games. I wonder in this episode if I can use an unfinished one from years ago to make a card game using what I learned from my last game I just wrapped up.

The Thirteenth Hour Podcast #446: Thoughts on Game Design and Ideas on a Homebrew Tomb Raider Card Game

https://archive.org/download/podcast-446/Podcast%20446.mp3

In a much earlier post, I wrote a bit about an unfinished pixelart Tomb Raider game I’d started.  I recently wondered if it would be possible to finish that story (which involved Lara questing after the captured imperial regalia of Japan) but not as a video game.  Given my recent experience making a Rocketeer card game, I wondered if I could do something similar but aim for upping the complexity a bit using some of the ideas I’d thought of from the Rocketeer vs. the Third Reich game that didn’t quite make it in there.  At the very least, I would be able to finally use some of the sprites I made for the game as the art for the cards:

– though the Lara animations have come in handy in all the other times I’ve needed something similar, it would nice to finally use them for somewhat of their intended purpose.

– I figured that Lara could get a cloak at some point that would make her less visible, making her less able to be seen by enemies.  In the Rocketeer card game, Cliff had a rocket pack he could use to avoid combat and get to places, so what if Lara had some sort of detectability statistic that determined how much noise or visibility she possessed?

– I also wondered if Lara could acquire various weapons as she went through the the journey, just like the video games that inspired it.  She would start with pistols, but if she found ones with more abilities, like fully automatic fire, she could use those instead.  I could also give each weapon some stats for its use to determine how its handling would affect the likely of it actually hitting what Lara was shooting at, to account for things like recoil.  On each card, I could include the instructions of how to roll to account for these differences.  For the sake of simplicity, I might assume that all weapons use the same ammunition so there’s one ammo stat to keep track of.

– Lara could start out with her use basic acrobatic abilities, but she could level those abilities up over the game to do additional things, like going from a backflip to a backflip with more height, covering more distance, or adding in a half twist to land in the opposite direction.

– I also wanted Lara to have an unarmed attack that could more silent and not use any ammunition.  She might be able to level that up as well to increase its power or cover more distance, e.g. with a jump.

Say tuned!  Maybe this game and its accompanying story will finally get finished after all these years!

Thanks for listening!

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Check out the growing line of Thirteenth Hour toys and other products on the Thirteenth Hour Studio Etsy store (https://www.etsy.com/shop/ThirteenthHourStudio).  There are a number of custom figures from retro films being sold for charity that available there as well.  For example, the hunter action figure from A Shadow in the Moonlight is now done and available on Etsy!

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Check it out!

As always, thanks for listening!

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