Number of The Beast
Number of The Beast is a single player print and play card game. It involves rolling dice and sorting through a deck of playing cards to collect the Twelve Apostles (face cards) before collecting three sixes.
I designed, developed, playtested and iterated the game over the course of about two months.
My overall goal was create a solitare-esque experience that was quick to pick up, and enjoyable to replay. I also wanted to attempt to add tension through the use of religious imagery.
The game rules can be printed below. All that is needed to play are three dice and a deck of regular playing cards.
Making a ‘Religious’ Card Game
My professors had mentioned that religious games were an untapped market. This got my head spinning on how I could make a simple card game into a religious game. The requirement for this assignment was that every element of the game needed to either be printed, or found around the average house. This put a pretty heavy constraint on injecting religious DNA into the game itself.
I decided the lean into religious imagery within the games rules. All the face cards were apostles, and all those apostles had in-game abilities that corresponded to their histories.
Did this add the tension I hoped for? Not really. I learned pretty quickly that playing cards are pretty much just playing cards. I can call the King of Diamond Judas all I want, but at the end of the day, it’s still the King of Diamonds.
Lessons Learned
I really love card games, both TCG and traditional. Number of The Beast allowed me to try my hand at balancing card abilities. I loved doing this and seeing how cards interacted with each other at different times.
I ran into some difficulties during play testing with how certain abilities would resolve if they happened at the same time. I ended up making the decision to put the power in the hands of the player. I told them to do what they felt made the most sense. In hindsight, this is a pretty lazy solution and I think I could have been a touch more creative.
All in all, I think this game has a lot of merit. I still pick it up and play it every now and again. I think it would make a pretty radical digital game. I hope to make that happen soon.