Card of Darkness

Factsheet

Developer:
Zach Gage, Pendleton Ward, Choice Provisions
Based in New York, New York

Website:
stfj.net

Press / Business contact:
zach@gage.nyc

Social:
twitter.com/helvetica
twitter.com/buenothebear
twitter.com/totallychoice
Skype

Previous Releases:

Pocket-Run Pool
Flipflop Solitaire
Typeshift
Really Bad Chess
Sage Solitaire
#Fortune
Ridiculous Fishing
SpellTower
Halcyon
Sonic Wire Sculptor
Bit Pilot
Unify
synthPond
Lose/Lose

Description

Embark on an epic hand-animated adventure from Zach Gage, Pendleton Ward, and Choice Provisions.

Cast powerful spells, slay fantastic monsters, discover ancient secrets, and ultimately save the world — just by picking up the right cards.

Card of Darkness is a full-featured adventure designed around an accessible, minimalist, card game core.

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The journey has been long, but finally you're here in the heart of Glinhorn Forest at the edge of darkness. The people asked for a hero and they got you. Good thing you're a hero.

Many stacks of cards lie before you filled with monsters, treasures, weapons, potions, and spells.

You can only see the top card of each stack — what lies beneath is a mystery.

Sometimes the cards you see are fearful monsters, fantastic treasures, or weapons you really really need, and you can take any of them... but there's a catch! You must finish what you start.

If you take a card from a stack, you must eventually take all cards under it... and you won't know what dangers (or treasures!) lie beneath the surface until it's too late.

Every level in Card of Darkness is a slow reveal of a compelling and ever-changing puzzle, filled to the brim with risk/reward decisions.

But thats no problem for you — hero.

------JUST GIVE ME THE NUMBERS

- Journey through 8 environments in your quest to recover the Card of Darkness
- Defeat 5 ancient and terrifying bosses
- Find and equip 52 cards from the Deck of Darkness
- Discover over 100 unique monsters, weapons, treasures, potions, and spells

History

Over the past decade I've established a practice of making deep, compelling, and accessible games for people who don't have the time or space in their lives to learn every intricate detail of every videogame.

I strive to take the best of modern game design and package it clearly and accessibly so people can enjoy new kinds of games they might otherwise not be interested in.

For years I've wanted to tackle roguelikes, a game genre where you battle through randomly generated worlds of monsters and challenges. It is one of the most complicated, inaccessible, — and incredibly fantastic — game genres out there.

Card of Darkness is my attempt to take some of my favorite moments from roguelike games, and distill them into a simple but deep card game.

It's the streamlined design you'd expect from me, but this time layered with tons of stuff, just so much stuff! Well over a hundred unique monsters, spells, and upgrades. And art! Oh my goodness — the art! Beautiful incredible hand animated art from Pendleton Ward, Nelson Boles, Andrew Onorato and Evan Borja. Plus an incredible soundtrack from Stemage.

I honestly can't believe I got to make this videogame with all these amazing people. This certainly wasn’t possible without the support and hard work of everyone at Choice Provisions. We all poured our hearts into this and we hope you love it.

I'm so happy to be able to present it to you — Card of Darkness, an epic adventure for everyone.

-zach

The Chaos Zone Update

The Prophecy frog beckons — welcome to the Chaos Realm!

Enjoy this brand new adventure through procedurally generated dungeons that get harder each day of the week. Save up your gold to collect (and upgrade!) Cards of Darkness to help you in your quest to defeat a Sunday Dungeon and become the richest hero on daily leaderboards.

In addition to all the enemies and items from the original game, in the Chaos Realm you’ll:
- Encounter 5 brand new enemies!
- Mix things up with the Cursed Blade, Bravery Potion, and Greed Chest!
- Wield three bizarre new Chaos spells!

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I’ve been thinking about daily dungeons for a long time — ever since Doug Wilson and I proposed them for Spelunky HD!

I love dailies and the rhythm of play and concentration they inspire. Often beating a roguelike feels completely impossible at the outset, but playing once each day can establish a habit of deliberate practice that improves your play step by step until one day you triumph. For dailies in Card of Darkness I wanted to go beyond one singular tough objective, so we pulled something in from traditional pen and paper daily games like Crosswords — the notion of week-long difficulty curves.

Perhaps you can beat the Monday dungeon, but how quickly can you amass the cards and skill to beat a Sunday dungeon? See you on the leaderboards!

-Zach

Developer Bio

Zach Gage is a game designer, programmer, educator, and conceptual artist from New York City. His work often explores the power of systems, both those created by social interaction in digital spaces, and those that can be created for others, through the framing of games. An Eyebeam Alumni, Apple Design and Game of The Year Award Winner, and BAFTA Nominee, he has exhibited internationally at venues like the Venice Biennale, the New York MoMA, The Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, XOXO Festival in Portland, FutureEverything in Manchester, The Centre for Contemporary Art Ujazdowski Castle in Warsaw, and in Apple stores worldwide. His work has been featured in several online and printed publications, including The New York Times, Art In America, The New York Times Magazine, EDGE Magazine, Rhizome.org, Neural Magazine, New York Magazine, and Das Spiel und seine Grenzen (Springer Press). In games, he is best known for SpellTower, Ridiculous Fishing, Really Bad Chess, and Lose/Lose.

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Pendleton Ward is a cartoonist known for creating the animated television series Adventure Time. Now he spends his time laying on the ground so his short-legged dogs can sniff his ears.

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Choice Provisions creates unique gaming experiences for humans to enjoy. We view video games as an art medium and approach it as such.

A core belief of the Choice Provisions team is that great people accomplish great things together, and this mantra drives us to find only the best collaborators to work with. Our staff is full of passionate, disciplined, and talented people who exhibit foresight and have strong wills.

Every video game company on Earth should make awesome games, and Choice Provisions strives to fulfill that goal by working with fantastic people on refreshing projects. We hope you enjoy our games, because sometimes a really good video game is just awesome.