STARXROSS is a modern multi-deck card battler with a focus on satisfying, easy-to understand card effects and intuitive stat-based gameplay. Using low number values, short descriptions with colour-coded effects, mini-guides explaining each card's use, with high-contrast two-tone illustrations, STARXROSS is designed to be a satisfying and easy to play game.
STARXROSS was born from a place of deep admiration for the "card-battler" genre of card game, an appreciation for turn-based gameplay, and the sci-fi genre. Combining a love and analysis of each, STARXROSS was born.
Each card is separated into 4 types, each with a respective deck a player can draw from at the start of their turn. These being:
CREATURE: One of two factions, the peaceable, unified Phowl people and the seemingly war-like lizard Pholk. Placed on one of three "Lanes" to attack the other side.
ARMS: Equippable armaments attached to CREATURE cards. Heighten highlighted CREATURE stats while providing a variety of powerful combat/turn effects.
LAND: Equipped to one of three spots on the battlefield, referred to as "Lanes." Heighten one or two highlighted stats while providing powerful effects that bend the game rules.
ACTION: One-time use powers played at each lane with a Creature during the Battle Phase, discarded at the end of the turn. Provide additional stat augments and immediate effects to turn each individual battle in your favour.
Each CREATURE card has 4 values, being:
ATTACK (ATK): Dictates how much damage the card will deal.
DEFENCE (DEF): How much the card will reduce incoming damage.
WILL: How much damage the card can sustain.
INITIATIVE (INIT): Determines which Creature attacks first, dictated by the higher value. If higher by 3 or more, the Creature attacks twice.
Your goal is to plan and play cards during the Prep Phase, and battle to remove the opposing Creature and Land cards in the Battle Phase. Doing so will allow you to attack an empty lane, dealing damage directly to the opposing player to reduce their WILL to 0, winning you the game.
STARXROSS, in its infancy, began as a research assignment into how sci-fi as a genre operates to make its world seem more realistic and enthralling. Through studying both modern and historic examples of the genre, both in literature and film, the conclusion drawn was as follows: Sci-fi can create imaginative scenarios while still seeming relatively realistic because of its use of human qualities in its characters, settings, artefacts, etc.
By amplifying human emotions in its characters, fostering relatability in analogous human tools, and creating scenarios viewers can still relate to, science-fiction utilizes a "suspension of disbelief" through relatability and recognizable 'things.' This allows the genre the ability to make impossible worlds that still seem realistic.
Through this, STARXROSS was born.
Just as sci-fi as a genre utilizes human landscapes, tools, and emotions to "empower" its realities and characters, so too will the player "empower" their field and CREATURES in a in a literal gameplay sense, translating the drawn conclusion in a very literal way:
Alien CREATURES resemble humanity with a distinctly human, cartoon-y body-type, further with a "human" almond eye shape.
CREATURES will use ARMS to empower themselves, using human items.
CREATURES will use ruinous human pasts and techno-future LAND cards to gain passive effects.
CREATURES will use human ideas and emotions like "Guerilla Warfare" and "Hubris" to foster human relatability to make themselves even stronger with human ACTIONS.
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An active game may look like this.
Each player sets up their CREATURES as best they can, while using the various effects each card gives to the best of their ability. High contrast visuals keep each card type distinct, while a rotating colour palette—with each colour presented in their sibling card types—keeps each one as a visible family.