The New Model
Why, Hello.
I'm Danny Judas. It's been just under three months since I've put out communication in this particular medium. I did release something of a post-mortem on the Alpha test to my Patreon back in May, but today's blog will be more of a look forward than a step back. Most notably, we're going to take a look at some of the changes that can be expected in the demo. Then, maybe we'll get into some juicy extremely tentative speculation about when it could maybe possibly potentially come out. Exciting.
Firmware Update
The Alpha test was a highly stripped down take on Collect Call, focused exclusively on the core combat and Feng Shui mechanics. Even these elements were pretty light, with only eighteen or so Feng Shui items with extremely toned down effects. The combat was more involved with a good variety of cards and enemies spread across the first three factions of the main game.
The demo is going to be much closer to a full vertical slice. The Feng Shui system will expand substantially, with a lot more emphasis placed on clarity, accessibility, and game impact. There will also be additional cards and a few reworked systems, such as how exactly cards are drafted and possibly how contracts are generated. Lovely Jane also received a heavy rework to make her less of a trap for new players. Insight is now easier to gain with levels offering multiple ways to gain the resource.
You might notice that I cleared this level in an odd way. This is part of a new system where foes can be 'Lost' under certain conditions. This is great for Jane, not so much for Joe.
The biggest changes to old content will be the new coat of audio and visual design they receive. Collect Call's Alpha was a very early look at what I have in mind for the game and almost no screen in the game was up to the usual Danny Judas standard. The Junk Shop, Vessel Select, Fixy Joe's Shop, and other areas still need to receive substantial overhauls.
This is no small undertaking, and I'm very much one to jump around between various things rather than focusing on one area at a time.
You can zoom in on cards now!
As part of the push to make Feng Shui feel more useful and satisfying, I devised a system where the player would be notified anytime an item in their arrangement did something. In a sense trying to channel the dopamine infused twitching of other contemporary rogue-lites while also trying to help the player understand what exactly they were achieving.
Don't mind our dust, this area under construction.
These apply to everything that Feng Shui items can affect. From extra cards in your drafts, to increases in contract bounty and difficulty -- even the junk cards that get added to your deck have bobbles when they're first drawn. The ultimate goal is to make the game feel more responsive and satisfying in as many aspects as possible. Having the game react more to player input should help both with fun and understanding.
There are now, and will be even more, little animated touches like this throughout the game. Things like enemies activating one-at-a-time with sound cues for triggering, aiming, moving, etc. Cards now have a fake 3D wiggle to them and 'pop' into place when hovered in shops. And so on.
New Features
While more polish and cleaned up visuals and juice are to be expected, its also extremely important to me that the demo launch with some genuinely new material for people to get stuck into. The main thrust of this release is the new "Wandering" system. I had wanted to update the Alpha with this mechanic, but unfortunately it didn't come together in time. I've decided to make it the key new feature in the demo, instead.
In the Alpha version of Collect Call, there wasn't anything to do other than accept contracts and attempt to complete them as efficiently as possible. You could buy trinkets and move them around, and fix your deck at Fixy's shop, but there was no way off the beaten path. My idea of the full game, however, has a lot more emphasis on roleplaying and storytelling.
To achieve this, more choices are necessary.
Wandering is a sort of push-your-luck system, where you can forgo shuffling your Trashed cards back in to your deck, and purging any NULL or other similar malware, in exchange for exploring New Americana East.
Featuring a surprise cameo from the 1-900-CULT "Supervisor."
Once you're done arranging your hoard, you'll be given the choice of Rebooting (the standard progression), or Wandering. If you choose to Wander, you'll then be given the opportunity to choose a location or shopkeeper to visit. For the demo, this will be the Arms Dealer and Robot Repair Bay. Before you arrive at your chosen destination, you must experience a random dilemma.
This is essentially my take on the now standard Random Encounter system for Roguelite card battlers. Its completely optional, but taking the time to break away from the cycle of completing contracts can give you powerful advantages.
At the Robot Repair Bay, you can buy Disguises and unique modifiers for your vessel. These can range from simple economy pieces (like gaining extra Insight for completing a level without taking damage) to full on new abilities (such as 'thrown weapons gain Smash, but break on impact'). Maybe there will even be a rubber chicken mask, for old times sake.
When it comes to the Arms Dealer, one major change from the demo is the removal of random weapons from the general drafting pool. These always felt like a drag and were almost never worth picking up (except Scissors). These cards have been pulled out of that system and placed here, in the Arms Dealer, instead. Alongside some buffs to how weapon cards work, and a more attractive template for their information, this location will be the bread and butter of gunslinging builds.
The final game will feature more alternative locations, like a Fortune Teller and Arcade. Maybe more!
Dilemmas
These events are my main way of providing a look into the world of Collect Call from the perspective of an androgynoid that lives and works within its confines. These are mostly weird, slice of life style events. Many of them will give you small boons or curses, but mostly exist to give more context to the world and its inhabitants than I can provide through other means. They will also let me give the audience a taste of the roleplaying systems I want to incorporate into the broader game.
Collect Call has a simple stats system. Each character has their own spread of Strength, Intellect, Dexterity and Tenacity that controls what cards they can draft. They also each have their own entirely unique starter decks with different shares of each suit.
I've played a fair bit of tabletop games, and one that has stuck in my mind since I first started playing it is Arkham Horror: The Card Game. I've always loved that game's approach to deckbuilding, where its more like building a TTRPG character than a hyper-focused stack of interlocking mechanics. It does that too, extremely well I might add, but every card drips with theme, and the way the game sneaks your character's flaws and weaknesses into your deck so seamlessly is extremely inspiring to me.
To that effect, I also want Collect Call to feel somewhat similar. Your deck is not just how you deal with your foes -- as a construct, this little stack of subroutines is how you see the world. Its how you maneuver all kinds of conflict. Is your vessel aggressive? Reserved? Cautious? Materialistic? Completely psychotic?
In dilemmas, we'll see a sliver of this. Some dilemma options require you to perform skill checks, kind of like any Western style RPG. Where this differs, though, is how the checks are rolled. Rather than a simple dice roll where the result is compared to your current stat, instead your stat determines how many cards you draw from your deck. Each card drawn that has the same Suit as the skill being tested adds its rank to your result. If your result is higher than the difficulty number, you pass!
As an example:
Your current vessel is Lovely Jane, and a dilemma asks you to repair a mechanoid koi fish. The skill it tests is Intellect, and the difficulty level is five.
Lovely Jane has a base Intellect of 5. So, you will draw 5 cards from your deck.
You draw the following cards: Slip Away, Precache, Juke, Door Bash, and Bait.
Slip Away, Precache, and Juke are all Intellect cards. Their ranks are 2, 2, and 1 respectively. Door Bash and Bait are Strength and Tenacity cards, so they don't contribute to the skill test.
With 3 contributing cards drawn, and a total rank among those cards of five, you pass!
You pocket the repaired koi and take it home to shove it in some random corner of your storage closet.
As you can imagine, the way you build your deck is just as important as who you choose to play. Handy Joe's starter deck is full of Strength cards, and his Intellect and Dexterity are middling. With only one Intellect card in his starting deck, he has no hope of being able to repair our hypothetical koi fish. But if Jane needed to wrench open a garage door, she'd have little chance compared to Joe.
This system has already been implemented, though I still need to create a visualization for it. I'd love to see it expand into some card effects, and I also have plans for additional roleplaying systems in the form of dialogue with shopkeepers.
Progress
This is more 'in-the-weeds' than previous sections, but I'll still try to keep it fairly concise.
In terms of raw numbers, things haven't changed that much yet: the open alpha started with 85 player cards and the game now has 102. I still have not added any new Feng Shui items, and only two new enemies were added during the open alpha (the Dada and the D3 Pylon). I certainly have plans of substantially expanding the Feng Shui item pool. The card pool will receive a more modest expansion between now and the demo. However, enemy variety is not likely to change much until I start working on material for the final, released game. I'd like to have at least a dozen dilemmas written up, and I need both new shops to have a substantial (if not full) art pass, as well as all previous screens to be finished.
Here's what's left:
Character Select
Contract Select
Mission Clear
Death Screen
Intro Crawl
Fixy Joe
Quotes
Deck Viewers
Dilemmas
Wander Select
Arms Dealer
Disguise Shop
This is not including enemy arts, card arts, dilemma art, or anything like that. It also doesn't include further work on cards, Feng Shui, options, localization, or whatever other gameplay overhauls may be necessary to make the game the best it can be before I put it back in your hands.
This is a lot of work. And unfortunately, its also slow going. I try to be efficient and reuse as much as possible, but I do still want the game to look very stylish.
Each item in the list realistically represents at least two full days of work. So a minimum of 16 hours of concerted effort. I've not been shy about sharing how little time I have to work on games, and that's really not changed. I have not been able to stay consistent with the game week after week for a variety of reasons (many of which are admittedly self-inflicted). I am still very happy with the progress I have been making and I do think the workload is manageable.
The current aim for the demo, and I do say this with a lot of hesitation, is a demo release in Summer 2026. That gives me until September 21st to pull something together. It might be necessary to cut content, and I'm certainly not opposed to simply re-opening the Alpha if I don't quite make it in time for a proper demo.
After that I will probably need a short break. Even if I haven't been working as much as I'd like, I have been working a lot. I'll need to see how the demo performs and what people think of it so that I can plan my next steps. If the demo goes well, we might see talks of publishing, a Kickstarter, early access, etc. For now I'm content to keep my head down and keep working.
Sounding Off
There's still a ways to go, but I hope this has been enlightening for you. I am always very nervous about sharing unfinished work, and that anxiety has only gotten more powerful over time. But its nice to rip the band-aid off every now and then.
Part of what prompted me wanting to even write this post was that Collect Call has officially crossed 700 Wishlists this past week or so! I check in on the number occasionally and am always surprised to see it still going up. Its exciting and extremely motivating!
Thank you for reading and keeping up with the game. There will be more in the future: Collect Call is shaping up well and I am very much looking forward to sharing more soon.
Scribble of Character #3, Surly Joe