I honestly didn't know what this game was going to become when I started making it.
The original idea was pretty simple:
What if we took the tension of poker and put it on a medieval battlefield?
I liked the idea of having a good hand and still having to make the right decision with it.
So I started experimenting. Three lanes. A few cards. A simple scoring system.
And then, as these things usually go, the "simple" idea started getting bigger.
From a Simple Idea to a Game
The battlefield became three lanes: Left Flank, Center, and Right Flank.
The deck became a 40-card deck.
The matches became a series of decisions about where to commit your cards and when to hold them back.
Eventually, we had something that felt much more interesting than the original idea.
You can have a great hand and still lose because you played it in the wrong place.
You can sacrifice one lane to secure two others.
Making This as an Indie Game
Medieval Decklords has been a small project from the beginning. There isn't a huge team behind it.
A lot of the development has been experimenting with mechanics, throwing away things that didn't work, fixing bugs, changing systems, and repeatedly asking ourselves:
"Is this actually fun?"
Some of the things that look obvious in the final game took a surprising amount of time to figure out.
We also released the demo, watched people play it, read the feedback, fixed bugs, added systems, changed things that weren't working, and slowly turned the prototype into the game you can play today.
That process has probably taught me more about game development than I expected.
What's in the Full Release?
The full version brings together everything we've been building toward.
Three-lane poker battles
40-card deckbuilding
Roguelike progression
Card upgrades
Tournament-style gameplay
Multiple rulesets
Field effects
Single-player
Co-op
The goal was always to make something that is easy to understand when you first play it, while giving you enough decisions to make every match interesting.
You only have a few cards. You still have a lot to think about.
Thank You
If you played the demo, added Medieval Decklords to your wishlist, reported a bug, gave us feedback, shared the game with someone, or simply followed along while we were building it: Thank you.
For a small indie project, every person who takes the time to play the game matters.
This is the biggest milestone for Medieval Decklords so far, but we're not finished experimenting with it yet. We'll keep listening, fixing, improving, and seeing where we can take it.
For now, though, the game is finally in your hands.
Medieval Decklords is out now on Steam.
Build your deck.
Choose your battlefield.
Play your hand.
See you on the battlefield.
Oba Games