Game Design - Trading Card Game - 2022-Present
A battle card game about spiritual warfare, where your deck is your life and every hit costs you more than a number.
Role
Solo DesignerType
Trading Card GameStatus
In Development
Genre
Battle Card Game / TCGArchetypes
7 IdentitiesUnique Hook
Deck = Life TotalCompetition
Yu-Gi-Oh · MTG · PokémonThe Concept
Life and death, distilled into a deck.
Ordiri started with a single question: what does it actually feel like to put your lifeforce on the line? Not as an abstraction but as something you can lose, card by card, decision by decision.
In Ordiri, your 50-card deck is your life total. When you take damage, you remove cards from your deck. Every hit narrows your options. Every wound is irreversible. The damage isn't a number going down, it's potential, erased.
That one mechanic set the tone for everything else. Consequence became the foundation. And consequence makes every move feel real.
The Three Pillars
Three pillars. One experience.
Negotiate with Creatures
Players spend resources to persuade Eidolons to act. Success is never guaranteed, it has to be earned each time, and the cost of failure is real.
Levels to Command
An RPG-inspired XP system that improves negotiation success and unlocks player-specific "ult"-style powers, never before seen in a TCG.
Duality as a Power Source
Every resource and creature stat has two faces, Day and Night. The tension of that cycle is where strategic mastery lives.
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Design Process
How playtesting changed everything.
Playtesting began in early 2022, I scribbled notes, then Google Forms, then structured hypothesis-driven sessions. The shift from reactive note-taking to proactive hypothesis testing was the most important design skill built through this process.
Current testing targets: resources should fuel success roughly 75% of the time; XP should yield one level per 20 successful actions, 25 unsuccessful.
The Iterations
What the process actually looked like.
Version 1
The Breaking Point
Dual Day/Night stat lines on every card. In theory: Duality realized. In practice: cognitive overload. Feedback wasn't "this is complex", it was "this doesn't feel worth it." Cut.
Version 2
Identity Emerges
Behavioral types removed. Roster expanded to seven archetypes. Players now chose an identity, a playstyle with its own mechanics and personality. Early fans responded immediately.
Current Focus
Negotiation Under the Microscope
Testing centers entirely on creature negotiation, the most novel mechanic and the one with the most unknowns.
