In Bladius, gladiators assemble a deck of equipment cards which they draw upon to face opponents in real-time combat. In the base game, they will choose three cards from a deck comprised of five main card types:

Card types

• Weapons. Equip or dual wield weapons to wail on your enemies, from slow and strong axes, to fast and weak daggers. The bonuses for these cards are applied only when attacks hit. Like most equipment, a diamond sword or mace will be stronger than their wooden counterparts.
• Shields. Equip a shield to thwart attacks. The bonuses for these cards are applied only when actively blocking attacks. The position and angle of the shield is extremely important.
• Armor. Equip pieces of armor to increase defense against all attacks. The bonuses for these cards are passively applied regardless of blocking.
• Boons. Gain a passive attribute boost during battle. Effects include increased health, stamina, attack, and defense. Bonuses increase with rarity.
• Banes. Inflicts a passive attribute penalty during battle. Receive experience and gold bonuses for the challenge! With increased penalties come increased rewards.

Building a deck

Gladiators begin their careers with a Starter Pack, including:

• 3 common weapons
• 1 common shield
• 1 common piece of armor
• 1 common boon or bane
• 3 potions
• 1 gold

Between matches they can use their winnings at the store to purchase new cards or potions. Between regular winning streaks, they earn booster packs containing:

• 3 random cards
• 1 potion
• Gold equal to total matches won

Gladiators are expected to grow their decks efficiently to ensure optimal performance. Beware that with too few weapons in their decks, they will often fight unarmed without the ability to block.

Drawing a hand

Before every match, gladiators draw three cards to determine their equipment. They will automatically discard and redraw for invalid hands, like three weapons or two shields. Undesirable hands can be redrawn indefinitely for just one gold each. Typically the strongest weapon will be equipped in the main hand, with shields delegated to the offhand.

Once satisfied with their hands, gladiators enter battle.

Coming soon

Progress so far is good on GitHub. This weekend I’m working on a UI sprint which will find the general game flow and screens come to life. Behind the scenes I’m componentizing a lot of the systems for card attributes and hands so the player and enemies can work with the same inputs.

For the first playable build I’d like to release an idle version of the game which skips the combat sequences to demonstrate the general game loop. I’m looking forward to sharing that soon!