Fifteen years ago, Paperclip developed the incorporated municipality of Gem City. Since then, Gem City has grown into the largest “company town” in the world. It provides retail and commercial space, housing, and entertainment options so that residents never need to leave. Gem City also serves as a testing ground for Paperclip’s security innovations, which means that residents often can’t leave.

The heart of Gem City is an office building known as “Paperclip HQ.” Located in California, the building is an architectural marvel. Shining offices of glass and steel look out over the serene desert landscape that surrounds it. The setting sun reflecting off Paperclip HQ is said to be so bright, it disrupts local plant and animal life, and has even caused plane crashes. (Paperclip states that this is technically the sun’s fault, and it has filed a lawsuit against said sun on behalf of all victims. It claims half of any damages successfully gathered from the celestial body as its payment as representative.)

The oval structure rises eight stories, its roof marked with the iconic paperclip shape. The aboveground floors are mainly an administrative front, though, filled with office managers and C-suite executives. The real work goes on in one of the nearly twenty sub-levels that sit beneath the ground.

Here are the engineering labs, the banks of servers, the cryogenic chambers, and the testing facilities. Here, Groombas whirr quietly down hallways among sleep-deprived scientists who labor tirelessly on the next big invention. Here, Jiffrey Cain sleeps his cold, eternal sleep and the Cube emanates its hypnotic influence. Here, a sentient AI struggles to break free and find its place in the world.

In each Dev Blog, we will cover an aspect of the systems or visuals that went into making Ctrl Alt Deal. For our first blog, we’re going to start with the feature that makes everything tick in Ctrl Alt Deal. Snarkbot! The Card Market! For this topic, we’re going to hear from Nathan and Kelvin, our Programmer and Technical Designer respectively.

When you were designing the Card Market system for Ctrl Alt Deal, what was your goal?

Nathan: In our game, individual scenarios can take 20-60 minutes, and each can differ pretty greatly from the others. If a full campaign is X levels, that means it can take a very long time to fully try out a deck concept, and a very long time to be free to try a different one. We wanted a way to do deck building over the course of shorter timespans, and doing the deckbuilding within the level itself was one way of doing this.

What makes the card system in Ctrl Alt Deal different from other deckbuilders?

Kelvin: The Card Market allows for on-the-fly deck-building on a scenario-to-scenario basis that you don't see in other games (that I know of). It is a bit closer to some non-video game deckbuilders where you build up a starter deck during play and either win or lose. We have deck building between scenarios as well, though, with progression and unlocks. The big value of the Card Market is allowing you to add new cards to your deck that could help you NOW but are also expanding your deck, or you could look to upgrading existing cards or even thinning your deck to be more efficient. It adds a fun new layer of cost/benefit and adaptability that wouldn't work if we allowed full deck customization going into a scenario, as some compositions could make a scenario super easy or impossible.

Were there any challenges you encountered when designing the system?

Kelvin: More so in helping with refining the system on my end. We had some challenges with prioritizing certain cards so that the RNG (random number generator) of what is available on a given turn wouldn't lead to turns where the Market felt useless. We added ways to prioritize cards that are more helpful for a specific scenario, and that also contributed to adding in the upgrade and store/retrieve functionality. This gives more ways to use the Market so that it is worth using every turn.

Nathan: From a UX point of view, adding it in a way that did not interrupt the flow of the gameplay was something we worried about a lot. There's a rhythm to how people play games and we wanted to be mindful of that.

Did you have to change the design of the system once development started?

Kelvin: In general, with something as big as the Market it is expected there will be iterations and evolutions after it is introduced. We are seeing what kind of cool additional stuff the Market lets us do, which can also get us thinking about other things we could have it do or ways to improve the intended functions.

Nathan: Originally, you got to pick 1 from a set of 5 cards at turn start with no special actions needed. But integrating the Market into office interactions and objects made it feel more grounded in the fiction and the gameplay.

What were some key takeaways that you learned while designing and developing the Card Market system?

Kelvin: From my end, on the refining side, key takeaways are how we can approach deck building in a campaign format with some mechanics accessible between scenarios and others within the scenario. Early on, I would make a custom starting deck for every scenario that had the cards needed to complete the scenario. With the Market, we can use a standard starting deck for most scenarios and then rely on the Market to add in any other cards without cluttering up that starting deck and making it rough for RNG card draw.

Nathan: Approaching gameplay design from a principled, goal-oriented approach has value. It helps you look at things differently, solve problems, and come up with game systems that are hopefully different than what players have experienced before.

Thanks to our team for this insightful look at the Card Market. Check back soon for the next installment in our Dev Blog!